Performative role-play in film songs became an important device to challenge gendered hierarchies and heteronormative formations through the use of parody and the grotesque. Besides the investment in attire, movements, and gestures, the body’s liminal status in these songs is conveyed through the heroine’s pretense of drunken wantonness in a public setting. Shohini Ghosh (2002, 211) points toward the masquerade as an enabler of “excess, badness, abandon and revelry” for the female protagonist. In Intaqam (Nayyar, 1969), Sadhana begins to sing during a soiree thrown by her father-in-law, while pretending to be inebriated.
The masquerade relies on Lata Mangeshkar’s vocal inflections, like hiccupping, aligned with irreverent bodily practices, including bumping into men, throwing her slippers in the air, balancing a glass of whiskey on her head, and lying down and slithering on the floor, “lowly” acts of the body and the voice, not befitting the daughter-in-law of a so-called
respectable, elite family. The sheer exhibitionism is accentuated by the use of microgestures, intercut with the shocked expressions of the community. In Roti Kapda Aur Makaan (Kumar, 1974), we see Zeenat Aman dancing with abandon in a rain-soaked sari as she lip-syncs to Lata’s voice in “Hai hai yeh majboori” (Oh this cruel compulsion), teasing the hero for being too shy and wasting the romantic monsoon season by worrying about his search for a job. The use of colloquial words like “do takya di Naukri” (your two-penny job), Aman’s bodily gestures such as jiggling her backside to attract attention of the hero, Lata’s vocal modulation, and the hero’s shocked expression evoke the masquerade of street performance.
In his work on music’s representation in visual art, Richard Leppert (1993, XXVI) focuses on the “sight of the sound-producing body” and its enmeshment in the discourses of power, desire, and identity. I read the masquerade in film songs as a hypervisualization of the sound-producing body that draws attention to the anxieties about the blurring of caste, class, and gender identities. Further, the female singer’s availability for all kinds of gendered bodies decenters its exclusive attachment to a normative female body.
Asha Bhosle and Shamshad Begum became the chosen singers for gender-swapping songs such as the popular “Kajra mohabbat wala,” (The kohl of love) where Biswajeet and Babita swap gender roles and sneak into a staged performance to dodge some goons. In Pyaar ka Saagar (Goel, 1961), O. P. Ralhan makes a desperate bid to meet his beloved, kept under a watchful eye by her father, in the garb of a woman. But with a twist in the events, the girl’s father takes a fancy to this “woman” and asks her to sing a song. Asha’s deployment of a false, high-pitched voice in “Chahe koi bandook dikhaye” (Even if someone points a gun) draws upon the audience’s knowledge and audio training about the visual and sonic elements that go into the performance of a masquerade in Bombay cinema.
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In this display of homosociality, Ralhan’s facial expressions and grotesque body movements, miming the lyrics sung by Asha in a falsetto, rehearse what Chion (1999, 131) has described as a “a burlesque assemblage of body and voice.” What ruptures the sonic voice is the moment when Ralhan temporarily loses his balance and trips: this momentary lapse not only reveals his false hairdo but also the corporeality of the voice. In this fleeting moment, the voice that sings for Ralhan is that of Mahendra Kapoor, a popular male playback singer. At the outset, this may seem to be a return to the normative voice-body relationship expected from the playback system, but it also demonstrates how bodies enact various cultural norms (Grosz 1994, 118).
By lending her voice to songs that play out false identities, Asha Bhosle created a new template of sonic performance, questioning the notion of an “authentic voice” as the locus of interiority. In Rafoochakkar (Bedi, 1975), Asha lent her voice to Rishi Kapoor, a leading male star of the 1970s. In “Chuk chuk chak chak chuk chuk chak chak” (The train chugs), Paintal and Rishi Kapoor disguise themselves as two young women and join a band of girls on a train on their way to perform in Kashmir. Replete with nonverbal sonic elements that mimic the sound of a train, this racy, comic song highlights the indexical relationship between the voice and the body. Paintal’s wardrobe malfunction results in a momentary lapse of the voice, which has to be quickly restored to maintain the disguise.
Further, Asha’s vocals are distributed over two bodies. In the final antara,
Asha sings for both Neetu Singh and Rishi Kapoor, adding a falsetto to Rishi Kapoor’s lines. As we can see, Asha Bhosle’s voice became a preferred choice for cross-dressed and contingent bodies.
This excerpt from Shikha Jhingan’s ‘The Female Playback in Bombay Cinema: Voice, Body, Technology’, edited by Barry Keith Grant, has been published with Orient BlackSwan’s permission.