Last year, Malayalam cinema had as many as 15 Hindi songs and the number’s growing

Last week saw the release of Aami, the biopic of celebrated author Kamala Das (aka Madhavikutty, Kamala Suraiyya). The Malayalam movie itself may not have garnered great reviews, but does boast an impressive soundtrack. Interestingly, of the five songs, three are ghazals in Hindustani, written by Gulzar and set to music by master percussionist Taufiq Qureshi. Aami is the latest in the recent, increasing trend of the use of Hindi songs in Malayalam films. In fact, no other Indian film industry possibly has as many songs written in other languages (predominantly Hindi) as Kerala.

It can all be traced back to the love for Hindi film and Hindustani music in Kerala that is said to have originated through the Muslim population in North Kerala, particularly Kozhikode. The mehfils hosted in rich households in the town reportedly used to feature musicians from across the country, a practice that continues.

A bit of Bengal

In the early 20th century, these mehfils brought the Bengali musician Jan Muhammed Khanto Kerala. His son, Mohammad Sabir, went on to find his way into Malayalam movies, and, under the pseudonym Baburaj, became one of its finest composers. One of his most significant contributions was the introduction of Hindustani music. In fact, one of the earliest Hindi songs in a Malayalam film is considered to be a Meera bhajan composed by Baburaj and sung by S. Janaki for the 1963 film Ninamaninja Kalpadukal.

An important offshoot of this penchant was that music directors from the Hindi film industry began working for Malayalam films. The oft-quoted example is Salil Chowdhury in the 1966 classic Chemmeen. Tthere have been many since — veterans like Ravi (various films), Naushad (Dhwani, 1988) and Laxmikant-Pyarelal (Poonilaamazha, 1997) to the more contemporary like Vishal Bhardwaj (Daya, 1998, Carbon, 2018) and Amit Trivedi (Anthiponvettam, 2008). Chowdhury and Ravi in particular went on to have a prolific run in the industry, the latter even bagging a couple of Kerala State Film awards for his compositions. Interestingly, the collective Malayalam portfolio of these composers rarely features a Hindi song.

It is in the 80s that the Hindi song routine appears to have gathered momentum. Of course, before that there were instances like the 1974 movie Ayalathe Sundari, which had a dream song sequence featuring comedy actor Adoor Bhasi and Sreelatha romancing to ‘Kora Kaagaz Tha’ from Aradhana. But this was still a song originally from a Hindi film. Thaliritta Kinakkal (1980), with music by the little-known Jithin Shyam, also had a dream sequence with the comic pair singing a Hindi song. Except, in this case, the song was an original, titled ‘Shabaab Leke Wo’, written by Ayish Kamal and sung by Mohammed Rafi. This, incidentally, is Rafi’s only recording for a Malayalam film.

Apparently, the original plan was more ambitious — to make Rafi sing in Malayalam. However, he was reluctant to sing in a language he was unfamiliar with, and was convinced to record a Hindi song instead. The movie also had a ghazal, ‘Saaz-E-Dil Tod Do’, sung by Yesudas.

Blockbuster fusion

Three years later came Jnanpith-winning writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair’s directorial venture Manju, with seven of its eight songs penned by Gulzar in Hindi and composed by M. B. Sreenivasan.,

The 90s opened with one of the biggest musical blockbusters of all time, His Highness Abdullah. To introduce the leading man, Mohanlal, who played a Hindustani singer in the film, composer Raveendran, and lyricist Madhu created the very popular qawwali, ‘Tu Badi Masha Allah’,

The very next year, for the movie Vishnulokam, Raveendran adapted Shankar-Jaikishan and Shailendra’s ‘Awara Hoon’ and had Mohanlal sing the track.

Vidyasagar, several of whose compositions have had Hindi verses, made his Malayalam debut soon after, in 1996. One of his most experimental works was in Millennium Stars, a movie centred on a Colonial Cousins-like musical duo, the fusion-based soundtrack of which had a mix of Malayalam and Hindi lyrics.

And so the practice has continued, bringing us to the present where we have had close to 15 Hindi songs in 2017 alone, including one of the biggest hits, ‘Do Naina’, from Angamaly Diaries.

So what does this mean for the larger Malayalam film music scene? Not much. There has indeed been a rise in the number of Hindi songs but that has not been at the expense of the Malayalam ones. In fact, in 2017 the Malayalam film industry performed much better musically than the remix-ridden Bollywood. At this rate, Malayalam cinema could well become the alternate avenue for Hindi film songs.

The author spends a lot of his leisure time on movies and music, and is usually the last one to leave a cinema hall.