Bollywood (Filmi)

From Mumbai to Chennai, Toronto to Dubai, Queens to Sydney: No other style has quite the same grip on fans that Indian film music—known as filmi—holds. Churned out by the thousands every year, filmi songs are a genre like quite no other. Go nearly anywhere in India, and you will be accompanied by the latest filmi hit and golden standards of yesteryear blaring out from the radios in taxicabs and roadside vendors' stalls, while posters and paintings of screen idols stare down at you.

So what exactly is filmi? Essentially, they are movie soundtrack songs, but their impact and allure go far beyond that of Western, instrumental-heavy film scores. In mass-market Indian (and Pakistani) films, which are heavy on the melodrama and comedic fluff, the action and narrative are frequently broken up by spectacular song-and-dance sequences, in which the actors and actresses lip-sync music sung by some of the subcontinents' most talented vocalists. The thinking goes: We have the prettiest faces on screen, so why not match that visual dream-world with the best voices around?

Many movie-goers see the same films over and over again to catch their favorite songs; it's as if the movie theater were broadcasting beloved MTV videos for a larger-than-usual living room audience. (Then again, MTV India is quite successful in broadcasting homegrown and international pop, as well as filmi videos—at least to viewers wealthy enough to receive it.)

The best-known filmi comes from the Bollywood film industry, which produces some 800 or more movies per year. (The name "Bollywood" is an amalgamation of Bombay, the former name of the city of Mumbai, and Hollywood—it's the Los Angeles of India.) However, there are rich and vital regional film centers in places like Chennai (formerly known as Madras), with its stars like SP Balasubramanyam and Yesudas; Pakistan has its own "Lollywood" in the city of Lahore and claims its own timeless voices like Noor Jehan.

The most beloved star singers of Bollywood's golden age in the 1950s and 1960s are to this day referred to by their first names only and nicknames, and everyone knows immediately who is being talked about. A few of the biggest golden-era Bollywood names include singing sisters Asha and Lata (Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar). Mohd. (Mohammed) Rafi and Kishore Kumar. One can't overestimate the popularity of beloved composers past and present, either, like SD Burman, RD Burman, Laxmi-Pyar and today's most popular composer, AR Rahman. —Anastasia Tsioulcas