Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc
From: nuts@virginia.edu (Nuts)
Subject: Re: Singers and Actors
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 94 15:27:13 EDT
Lines: 78

It is rather interesting, isn't it, the question of whose voice matches
whom? While you and I can quickly discard pairings which are ludicrous -
S. P. Balasubramaniam singing for Amitabh Bachchan? - music directors work
under much tighter constraints, I'm sure. It might be enlightening to take
a step behind the scenes and try and figure out how it all works. Well, so
let's do it then!

So, once the song is composed (and it must be composed with a situation in
mind - not the canned stuff that seems to prevail these days!), it has to
be mapped carefully on to the actor(s). (I'm just going to use a generic
male actor for this discussion.) So what are the factors that must be taken
into account? Well, in my thinking, here's what they are:

1. Match between the actor's voice and the singer's best impersonation:
   This must be an important criterion, but not the definitive one and I'll
   explain why later. Very obviously, the most ridiculous pairing would be
   one where the singer's voice and the actor's voice are at two ends of
   the audio spectrum. It'll rock my world if an actor with a deep bass
   goes into treble every time he has the urge to burst into song. So one
   aspect of the match must be the frequency of the voices. Another aspect
   of the match would be the tonal quality of the voice. But then this must
   be harder to match and I don't think it would be as disturbing as the
   first mismatch. A third aspect of the match would be to mimic the speech
   mannerisms of the actor. When we hear Rafi do such a good Johnny Walker,
   I suspect that is what it is that registers.

2. Public association of singer to actor:
   To me, this is an important criterion. It is possible that the original
   match of an actor with a singer was not really the best, but if a few
   songs from the original pairing caught the imagination of the public
   then people start associating the singer with the actor. As an example,
   funny as it may seem, these days whenever I picture Salman Khan singing,
   the voice is always SPB. I don't think Mukesh's voice fits Raj Kapoor as
   well as Manna Dey's does, but the Mukesh-Raj Kapoor pair had so many
   hits under their belt that you expect the voice of Mukesh every time RK
   sings. So, maintaining that continuity in the public imagination must
   weigh heavily on the music directors. To be sure, there are
   counter-examples - a who's who of singers singing for Dev Anand - but
   this is no mathematical formula else you and I would be doing it, right?
   Almost as a counterpoint, breaking the mould by choosing a new singer
   for an actor might bring a freshness which could change sagging
   fortunes.

3. The situation in the movie:
   This is probably an important consideration when there is more than one
   singer who could possibly playback for an actor. And then there are some
   choices which are almost independent of actors. For example, if it were
   a light ghazal, I (as a MD) would consider Talat Mehmood just because he
   has the perfect voice for it! And choosing Mohammed Aziz for a fun-filled
   song is probably a bad idea because there is so much pain in his voice...
   sorry, sorry, that bit of sarcasm just slipped out.

4. Technical considerations:
   However perfect the match may be with respect to the other criteria, if
   a singer can just not deliver the goods, there's no point in forcing
   him to sing, is there? It is difficult for Kishore Kumar to do a
   classical piece - face it, so there's no point twisting his voice into
   doing a song for Rajesh Khanna in which he plays a classical concert
   singer. Then there's range and bandwidth and other vocal gymnastics.
   Up to some recent point, if I were to choose between Anuradha Paudwal and
   Lata to do a bhajan, I would choose the latter just because she could
   put so much more into a song.

5. Regional considerations, favoritism, fees commanded, etc.
   Yeah, yeah, yeah...

I should stop right now before I make more contradictions... I wanted to
come up with more examples illustrating my points, but I'll spare y'all.

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