ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the musical language of Indian film songs in the 1940s, a decade in which the century-long struggle for independence from British rule culminated in bloody riots, pogroms, and the largest migration in human history. The climate in which popular film producers operated was, by the late 1940s, increasingly modulated by a left-progressive aesthetic inspired by emergent Nehruvian socialism. Nehru and Gandhi, among others, espoused a discourse of Modernism: they saw India as a diverse community bound by a common past and a shared struggle along the path to modernity. Ranjit Movietones's Tansen was a milestone of 1940s film soundtracks. It is cited as one of the earliest films in which classical Indian music serves as a primary resource for the song composer, in this case Khemchand Prakash. Less than a year before he died, Khemchand Prakash completed the musical score for the Bombay Talkies film Mahal.
