Indian Soundtrack Music -- Bollywood!

Modern Indian music is tied inexorably to filmi, the glorious products of the huge Indian motion picture industry. Indian movies often are excessive, psychedelic, and exploitative beyond the wildest imaginings of Oz. Huge gods fill the sky with fuscia arms -- like a Ray Harryheusen flick gone [more] beserk. The many dance sequences are incredible, and the music matches the action in craziness and intensity.

The majority of older Indian STs feature the voice of Lata Mangeshkar, who maintained the ability to sound like a romantic teenager throughout her long life. Some of the more unusual and fascinating films of the 1950s and especially 1960s flirted with such Western menaces as rock and the Beatles. Soundtracks in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s took a harder turn. Gangster films with funky disco (and drug) scenes have left a legacy of some very hip soundtracks. Rahul Dev Burman is the chief exponent of hard-edged music featuring Moog, funky tabla, and [in English] female solicitations to dance.

Buying: R.D. Burman is the first name to seek in hipper soundtracks. Look also for clues to decadent Western influences. Soundtracks with Lata Mangeshkar are always popular.