Music to his ears

Music to his ears

Making Rasikpriya and Lokpriya, films on classical and Hindi film music, has been for Arun Khopkar a journey for a familiar voice.

The idea of making a film on Indian music has been with me for a long time. When I thought about my deepest musical experience, I found that just as Indian classical music is a part of my identity, so is Hindi film music. Waking up in the early hours of dawn and looking at the light making its way through darkness, shaping the contours of the visible world and I have heard a melody from a distant past matching the light in mood and intensity. There have been occasions when the line of a film song would haunt me for days.

I tried to understand my response to our music and felt that the best way to do so is to make a film about these two apparently different musical systems. Just as a painter begins to look at a face differently the moment he decides to paint it, the very nature of the gaze of a film-maker begins to change the object he is looking at. Unsuspected discoveries are made; the familiar confronts you as unfamiliar, the unfamiliar reveals a profile that you have known for a long time. I began to feel the films stirring inside me.

Rasikapriya and Lokapriya are twins, but they are not identical twins. In fact, they complement each other in many ways.

Rasikapriya, the film about the cultural confluence in Hindustani art music is a film about my memory of our musical history.

Lokapriya is about the life around us as it is now. But there is no memory that does not touch upon the present and project it in the future. Present is constantly changing its skin under our gaze.

Recalling my experience of our classical music, the most memorable moments came back to me, not accompanied by the visuals of the actual places and times when I had heard the music. The music that I recalled created its own space, light, colours and textures. Then these images flowed with a rhythm inspired by the music.

Then began a search for the places, which corresponded to the images. Where are the caves that retain the traces of the presence of our ancestors and still stun us with their grandeur? Which location will give me back the vast expanse evoked by a slow rendering of a composition in Malhar? Where is a waterfall whose cascading will match in power the pattern of taans? Where can I find the sun trapped on an undulating surface to move in synchronisation with the trembling contour of a singer's voice? Which flower will make my heart leap with joy with the same excitement as when I hear the first notes of my favourite composition in Basant? Which architecture will whisper the intimate contact between the different cultures that produced our music?

For Lokapriya , the search took a totally different path. As there were film songs, which I remember over decades without having seen the film even once, I felt I should separate Hindi film music from the films. Hence the decision not to use a single film clip in this film on Hindi film music.

What fascinates me about Hindi film music is also the way people listen to it. After the Indian Gods, it is the only thing in India which is in every nook and cranny. You will find it when people are working, cooking, lifting heavy loads, travelling in trucks on dangerous roads, mending shoes, selling pans, celebrating the birth of god, a child or a political leader. Even the solemnity of death will not completely succeed in silencing it.

Its visual counterpart, the film hoarding will greet you in the most unexpected uninhabitable place. As a middle class child, I was allowed only to see certain films, `under parental guidance'. So the films took on a life of fantasy through the photographs of the stars sold on the streets, through film hoardings, through film magazines and old newspaper vendors and so on.

So the search went on for the images that would be as colourful and energetic as our film music. The cameraman, a willing ally in the conspiracy to make a film `wherein to catch the spirit' of Hindi film music, moved his hand-held camera to rhythms that came from his pulse beat dictated by years of music in him.

But images alone do not make a film. It is only when they are cut to have a meaningful dialogue with the sound track that they begin to yield a third meaning which is neither in the sound nor in the image. This chase and counterchase in which sound was seeking its image and image was looking for a voice lasted nearly two months. I hope that the result, the twin daughters Lokapriya and Rasikapriya have good looks and lovely voices. They may look vaguely familiar but you have never met them before.

-- Arun Khopkar's Rasikpriya and Lokpriya will be screened at the Tata Theatre on Friday, 6.30 pm. This will be followed by a discussion mediated by table player Aneesh Pradhan