Interview with Shivkumar Sharma, Classical Santoor Player and Hindi Film Music Composer

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Notes

1. This was generally films centred on classical music, or art films, which are partly defined in opposition to commercial Hindi films. Hence, for example, Ravi Shankar composed music for Gulzar's film Meera (1979), as well as Satyajit Ray's trilogy of films Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and Apur Sansar (1959).

2. A rapid flourish (tan) sung to the names of the notes Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa, known in brief as sargam.

3. Meera was a Krishna devotee and poetess of the Sixteenth Century. Bhajan is a Hindu devotional song.

4. Song from Silsila.

5. Song from Chandni.

6. Holi is the Hindu spring festival, and has folk songs associated with it in different regions of India. This song is from Silsila.

7. Hindi film songs are composed prior to filming, and the process of filming the (pre-recorded) songs is known as picturisation.

8. The nine aesthetic flavours of traditional Indian dramaturgy.

9. A type of drum from Kerala.

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Notes on contributors

Anna Morcom

Anna Morcom works on a range of issues relating to contemporary music and dance culture in India and Tibet, including film, media, modernity, nationalism, globalisation and economic development/marginalisation. She is the author of Hindi film songs and the cinema (Ashgate, 2007). She is Research Council UK Academic Fellow in the Music Department at Royal Holloway College, University of London