Songs are becoming like jingles these days. They are being used as promos for films,” lamented poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar at the Jaipur Literary Festival early this year.

And what better evidence of this than the latest hit song “DK Bose”, which pushed the film Delhi Belly into prominence much before its release. But then, song-and-dance sequences have always been Bollywood's USP. There was a time when one couldn't imagine a mainstream Hindi film without them. There have been exceptions, though, such as B.R Chopra's Kanoon in the 1960s.

Today, as the line between so-called commercial and art cinema blurs with the arrival of new ‘realistic' directors on the scene, song-less films are becoming quite common. But, when it comes to Bollywood, the films with their jhatkas and matkas (‘swinging moves' perhaps comes closest in English) have truly ‘arrived' on the global stage. Even the hugely popular American dance reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance featured choreography based on a Bollywood song in one of its episodes.

The Internet has virtually erased the geographical boundaries of music. Of course, this has made lifting and plagiarising easier. But, with the whole world as audience, Bollywood couldn't have afforded to disregard its USP. No wonder, then, these days most films are made keeping the overseas earnings in mind.

Global Bollywood – Travels of Hindi Song and Dance , edited by Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti, is a collection of essays by cinema historians, researchers and film buffs that looks into the “global reception, circulation, and transformation of Bollywood filmi geet and address the semantic, narrative and productive functions performed by the song and dance sequences”.

The essays, say the editors, look at the role that song-and-dance sequences play, sometimes deepening the ‘emotional narrative' of a film, or sending the film's message across. The book traces the journey of songs and dances from the bioscope to single screens to multiplexes to VCDs, DVDs and the Internet. It discusses the cultural influence these films had in pre-Independence India, during the Cold War, and the changes they have undergone in a globalised world. For, the popularity of Hindi films and songs is growing not only among the diaspora, but also in the clubs of Trinidad, Lagos, Manchester and New York, among the cab drivers in Australia and Athens, or on television screens in Tel Aviv.

In a recent essay, cinema expert Ashish Rajadhyaksha terms this mobility “all the more remarkable given that the Indian state hardly aided the industry in exporting its products”.

He says Hindi films and their music have been popular since the 1950s and 1960s. He refers to an interesting quote by the late film scholar B.D. Garga, who described a packed hall in Algeria, in 1957, watching Mehboob Khan's Mother India . “As I watched the film, I was surprised to see the spell a rural Indian family has cast upon a wholly Arab audience,” Garga says.

This kind of wide appeal that Hindi films and songs have around the world is undisputed. But, is this appeal on the wane? Some interesting essays look into the role and impact of technology on Hindi film songs — popularising them on one hand, and proving to be their killer on the other. Of late, digital piracy and downloads have been eating into this once-successful business. Also, the race to make as much money before the song loses its charm is leading to overkill. No wonder Hindi film songs, some really good ones too, have a very short shelf-life today and end up as ringtones for just a week after their release.

Just the other day, travelling on the Metro, I heard the melodious song Kal Ho Na Ho as a ringtone on someone's mobile phone. I jogged my memory, but couldn't remember when last I had heard the song in full on radio or television. It surely seemed a long, long time ago.

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