When sound finally came to celluloid, songs became integral to Indian cinema, more so because they were central to the Parsi-Urdu theatre from which our cinema emerged. When you were telling a story, you got the story to move forward by linking it with songs. You used songs as an interlude between dramatic sequences so that you could pause and take a breath. Songs also became a comment on the interiority of characters, helping to interpret their inner states. A boy and girl fall in love and express that feeling in the form of a song. Music also became vital to highlight dramatic action. A scene was underlined by music, a bed of music was spread under the sequence. These became the norms for the use of music in our...

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