Friday, March 26, 2010

The Night-Club Temper

I finally finished Ashok Da. Ranode's Hindi Film Songs: Music Beyond Boundaries (one year after I started it; not uncharacteristic of me, what with the twenty books I have in constant rotation at any time). Much over-my-head technical discussion of songs I will never hear, from movies I will never find. Alas! But also lots of new areas to explore which I can track down, and numerous entertaining tidbits.

Such as, from a discussion of Geeta Roy/Dutt: "It is to be expected that the idiom of night-club songs is too attractive to be restricted to night-club situations and to composers especially fond of that idiom! Geeta's success in vocalising this idiom tempted or prompted composers (even when not otherwise comfortable with this idiom) to use it as also to use it (sic) in non-night-club situations. Under the circumstances, one can describe this way of singing as full of the 'night-club temper'!" (p. 356)

Dividing worldly experience into night-club and non-night-club situations strikes me as a very handy way of looking at things! Or is that just what someone of the "night-club temper" would think?

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