BollySwar is a decade-wise compendium of information about the music of Hindi films. Volume 8 chronicles the Hindi film music of the decade between 2001 and 2010. This volume catalogues more than 1000 films and 8000 songs, involving more than 2000 music directors, lyricists and singers. An overview of the decade highlights the key artists of the decade - music directors, lyricists and singers - and discusses the emerging trends in Hindi film music. A yearly review provides listings of the year's top artists and songs and describes the key milestones of the year in Hindi film music. The bulk of the book provides the song listing of every Hindi film album released in the decade. Basic information about each film's cast and crew is provided and detailed music credits are provided. Where available, music credits go beyond information regarding music directors, lyricists and singers, and include the names of session musicians, assistants, programmers, arrangers, mixers, recordists, etc. Where applicable, music related awards are listed. Interesting trivia is listed for most films, more than 1500 in all. This includes information about artist debuts, plagiarised or sampled songs, controversies and stories behind the making of the film and its music. This book is primarily meant as a quick reference for people looking for information related to a Hindi film or a song, but readers can also browse through the book to get an overview of the events that shaped Bollywood music in the decade. Given that Hindi films are a reflection of the Indian society, the reader can also glean insights about the country's socio-political and cultural environment from the book.

BollySwar is a decade-wise compendium of information about the music of Hindi films. Volume 7 chronicles the Hindi film music of the decade between 1991 and 2000. This volume catalogues more than 1000 films and 7000 songs, involving more than 1000 music directors, lyricists and singers. An overview of the decade highlights the key artists of the decade - music directors, lyricists and singers - and discusses the emerging trends in Hindi film music. A yearly review provides listings of the year's top artists and songs and describes the key milestones of the year in Hindi film music. The bulk of the book provides the song listing of every Hindi film album released in the decade. Basic information about each film's cast and crew is provided and detailed music credits are provided. Where available, music credits go beyond information regarding music directors, lyricists and singers, and include the names of session musicians, assistants, programmers, arrangers, mixers, recordists, etc. Where applicable, music related awards are listed. Interesting trivia is listed for most films. This includes information about artist debuts, plagiarised or sampled songs, controversies and stories behind the making of the film and its music. This book is primarily meant as a quick reference for people looking for information related to a Hindi film or a song, but readers can also browse through the book to get an overview of the events that shaped Bollywood music in the decade. Given that Hindi films are a reflection of the Indian society, the reader can also glean insights about the country's socio-political and cultural environment from the book.

BollySwar is a decade-wise compendium of information about the music of Hindi films. Volume 6 chronicles the Hindi film music of the decade between 1981 and 1990. This volume catalogues more than 1000 films and 7000 songs, involving more than 1000 music directors, lyricists and singers. An overview of the decade highlights the key artists of the decade - music directors, lyricists and singers - and discusses the emerging trends in Hindi film music. A yearly review provides listings of the year's top artists and songs and describes the key milestones of the year in Hindi film music. The bulk of the book provides the song listing of every Hindi film album released in the decade. Basic information about each film's cast and crew is provided and detailed music credits are provided. Where available, music credits go beyond information regarding music directors, lyricists and singers, and include the names of assistants, arrangers, recordists, etc. Where applicable, music related awards are listed. Interesting trivia is listed for most films. This includes information about artist debuts, plagiarised or sampled songs, controversies and stories behind the making of the film and its music. This book is primarily meant as a quick reference for people looking for information related to a Hindi film or a song, but readers can also browse through the book to get an overview of the events that shaped Bollywood music in the decade. Given that Hindi films are a reflection of the Indian society, the reader can also glean insights about the country's socio-political and cultural environment from the book.

Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, "behind the curtain"--the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres. Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film music industry. On the basis of a fascinating set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creator and performers. Booth also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India. Featuring an extensive companion website with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain is a powerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry.

Sahir Ludhianvi is probably the only songwriter in Hindi films whose poetry was accepted in its purest form and incorporated as a film song. So great was his stature as an Urdu poet that he never had to mould his poetry to suit the demands of film songwriting; instead, producers and composers adapted their requirements to his poetry. His songs in films like Pyaasa, Naya Daur and Phir Subah Hogi have attained the status of classics. This exhaustive biography traces the poet's rich life, from his troubled childhood and his equally troubled love relationships, to his rise as one of the pre-eminent personalities of the Progressive Writers Movement and his journey as lyricist through the golden era of Hindi film music, the 1950s and 1960s.

Rajinikanth is, quite simply, the biggest superstar cinema-crazy India has ever seen. His stylized dialogues and screen mannerisms are legion, and his guy-next-door-cum-superhero image has found a hysterically appreciative following among millions of moviegoers. Naman Ramachandran’s marvellous biography recounts Rajini’s career in meticulous detail, tracing his incredible cinematic journey from Apoorva Raagangal (1975) to Kochadaiyaan (2013). Along the way, the book provides rare insights into the Thalaivar’s personal life, from his childhood days to his times of struggle—when he was still Shivaji Rao Gaekwad—and then his eventual stardom: revealing how a legend was born.

Raj Kapoor, the creator of some of Hindi cinema's most enduring classics, is one of the greatest film-makers India has ever produced. As producer, director, actor, editor, storyteller, he blazed a trail for subsequent generations of film-makers to follow and aspire to. He was also known to the world as an extraordinary and controversial showman, an entertainer par excellence, someone who created the template for Hindi cinema.Raj Kapoor: The One and Only Showman is a unique experiment, both an autobiography and a biography. While the autobiography uses his own words, culled from interviews, journals and anecdotes, to provide an intimate glimpse into the mind of a genius, the biography is an attempt to record for posterity the lesser-known facets of his magnificent personality through the recollections of his family, colleagues and friends. As revealing as it is engaging, this is a fascinating portrait of the man regarded as the last of the true movie moguls of Indian cinema.