Iconic imagination: listening to, and looking back at, the piano in early Hindi cinema

Andrew Alter; Jasmine Dean

doi:10.1386/safm.9.1.3_1

Iconic imagination: listening to, and looking back at, the piano in early Hindi cinema

Andrew Alter, Jasmine Dean

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This article identifies and analyses a selection of Hindi films between 1942 and
1991 in which pianos are used for songs. The number of such films is not great and
thus the piano is theorized as cameo – it arrives on-screen and in the soundtrack
with a clear purpose in order to reference a set of symbols from outside the film’s
narrative. Consequently, it represents not only a nostalgia for the recent colonial
condition, but also a host of cultural ideologies associated with westernization. By
compiling the list and analysing this set of films, we attempt to more clearly understand the symbolic meanings indexed through the picturization, and to contribute to a theorization of musical symbolization in film.

Original language	English
Article number	1
Pages (from-to)	3-20
Number of pages	18
Journal	Studies in South Asian Film and Media
Volume	9
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1386/safm.9.1.3_1
Publication status	Published - Apr 2018

Keywords

piano
score
colonialism
instrument
symbolism
westernization

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10.1386/safm.9.1.3_1

Cite this

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Iconic imagination: listening to, and looking back at, the piano in early Hindi cinema

Abstract

Keywords

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