ABSTRACT
The relationship between European landscape and film songs intensified in the 1990s with the Bollywoodisation of Indian cinema. Based on textual analysis and ethnographic research, this chapter traces the genealogy of film songs shot in European locations to highlight the transformations in their aural and visual style, along the axis of industrial practice. The article will examine the emergence of two distinct film song genres: namely the non-lip synced background song and the high-energy choreographed dance-driven production number. Background songs evoke the mood of the characters, and their affective states seem to flow from and into the locations inhabited by them. These songs also give us an aural perspective of the European city, subtly incorporating its sounds and musical culture. The dance numbers on the other hand involve the labour of a large number of dancers and crowd managers enabling inter-cultural interactions and an embodied engagement with the European locations used for shooting. Behind these shifts lies the deployment of sync sound recording in Bombay cinema, the rise of global dance cultures, and the emergence of mobile dancing bodies no longer contained by geographical boundaries.
