ASIAN STUDIES | ANTHROPOLOGY | ETHNOMUSICOLOGY WEIDMAN Playback Singing To produce the song sequences that are central to Indian popular cinema, sing- ers’ voices are first recorded in the studio and then played back on the set to and Cultural Politics be lip-synced and danced to by actors and actresses as the visuals are filmed. Since the 1950s, playback singers have become revered celebrities in their | own right. Brought to Life by the Voice explores the distinctive aesthetics and in South India affective power generated by this division of labor between onscreen body and VOICE THE BY LIFE TO BROUGHT offscreen voice in South Indian Tamil cinema. In Amanda Weidman’s historical and ethnographic account, playback is not just a cinematic technique, but a powerful and ubiquitous element of aural public culture that has shaped the complex dynamics of postcolonial gendered subjectivity, politicized ethnolin- guistic identity, and neoliberal transformation in South India. BROUGHT TO LIFE “This book is a major contribution to South Asian Studies, sound and music studies, anthropology, and film and media studies, offering original research and BY THE new theoretical insights to each of these disciplines. There is no other scholarly work that approaches voice and technology in a way that is both as theoretically VOICE wide-ranging and as locally specific.” NEEPA MAJUMDAR, author of Wanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s–1950s “Brought to Life by the Voice provides a detailed and highly convincing explo- ration of the varying links between the singing voice and the body in the Tamil film industry since the mid-twentieth century. The historical and ethnographic | analysis the book presents is meticulous and excellent.” PATRICK EISENLOHR, CULTURAL POLITICS IN SOUTH INDIA SOUTH IN POLITICS CULTURAL PLAYBACK SINGING AND author of Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World AMANDA WEIDMAN is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College and the author of Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Post- colonial Politics of Music in South India. SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS www.ucpress.edu Cover design: Claudia Smelser. Cover photograph: Playback singer L.R. Eswari performing at the Bharathiya Lalitha Kala Samsthe in Bangalore on August 2, 2006. Photo by K. Murali Kumar. Courtesy of The Hindu Images. Amanda Weidman Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Constance and William Withey Endowment Fund in History and Music. Brought to Life by the Voice SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES Edited by Muzaffar Alam, Robert Goldman, and Gauri Viswanathan Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Founding Editors Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the University of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press For a list of books in the series, see page 249. Brought to Life by the Voice Playback Singing and Cultural Politics in South India Amanda Weidman UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2021 by Amanda Weidman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Weidman, A. Brought to Life by the Voice: Playback Sing- ing and Cultural Politics in South India. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.104 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Weidman, Amanda J., 1970- author. Title: Brought to life by the voice: playback singing and cultural politics in South India / Amanda Weidman. Description: Oakland, California: University of California Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020045523 (print) | LCCN 2020045524 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520377066 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520976399 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture music—India, South—History and criticism. | Musical films—India, South—History and criticism. | Musical films— Social aspects—India, South. | Singing in motion pictures. Classification: LCC ML2075. W45 2021 (print) | LCC ML2075 (ebook) | DDC 781.5/4209548—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045523 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045524 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Sylvia and Valerie, two beautiful voices in my life Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Note on Transliteration and Spelling xv Introduction: Theorizing Playback 1 Part I. Prehistories 1. Trading Voices: The Gendered Beginnings of Playback 25 Part II. Playback’s Dispensation 2. “A Leader for All Song”: Making a Dravidian Voice 53 3. Ambiguities of Animation: On Being “Just the Voice” 78 4. The Sacred and the Profane: Economies of the (Il)licit 104 Part III. Afterlives 5. The Raw and the Husky: On Timbral Qualia and Ethnolinguistic Belonging 131 6. Anxieties of Embodiment: Liveness and Deadness in the New Dispensation 158 7. Antiplayback 187 viii Contents Notes 205 References 225 Index 243 List of Illustrations FIGURES 1. Cartoon, Kuntūci magazine, July 1948 38 2. Actress Savitri with playback singer P. Leela, August 1957 40 3. Sartorial differentiation between classical and playback singers, ca. 1972 45 4. K. B. Sunderambal singing in song sequence from Avvaiyyar (1953) 49 5. T. M. Soundararajan dressed for his role in Pattinathar (1962) 69 6. T. M. Soundararajan and M. G. Ramachandran in the early 1980s 76 7. “Pāṭṭum nānē pāvamum nānē” song sequence from Tiruvilayadal (1965) 77 8. P. Susheela and T. M. Soundararajan in the studio, ca. 1965 80 9. Musicians in a posed photograph in the studio, ca. 1962 86 10. Actress J. Jayalalitha recording a song, ca. 1968 89 11. Video still and clip of “Enakku vanta inta mayakkam” song sequence from Ni (1965) 112 12. “Paṭṭattu rāni” song sequence from Sivanda Mann (1969) 116 13. J. Jayalalitha acting in the song sequence “Ammanō Samiyō” from Naan (1967) 123 14. Singers with light music troupe, Chennai, January 2018 159 15. A. R. Rahman pictured on a ticket stub, January 2018 167 16. Studio musicians dressed for the studio scene in Server Sundaram (1964) 179 TABLE 1. Characteristics and Indexical Associations of Husky and Raw Voice 134 ix Acknowledgments It is my pleasure to acknowledge the people and institutions who have helped bring this work to life. My heartfelt thanks go to all those who took time from their busy lives to graciously allow an anthropologist into their midst. This book would not exist without the cumulative insight I gained from interviews and conversations and from observing the work of playback singers, voice teachers, music directors, sound engineers, lyricists, fans, and radio announcers. In Chennai: Anuradha Sriram, Anupamaa Krishnaswami, Chinmayi Sripada, K. S. Chitra, L. R. Eswari, Malathy Lakshman, P. Susheela, S. Janaki, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam, B. Vasantha, Vani Jairam, A. V. and Uma Ramanan, Sujatha Mohan, Suchitra, Sunitha Sarathy, Shweta Mohan, Divakar Subramaniam, “Malgudi” Subha, Ramya NSK, Rahul Nambiar, K. G. Ranjith, Madhu M. M., Ananth Vaidyanathan, Vasu, Vedanth Bharadwaj, G. Sivakumar, Satish Chakravarthy, Thayanban, Sindhu, Balaji, “Mix” Mujeeb, K. Sampath, R. Chandrasekar, Ram Subu, Abu Gabriel, K, Shyam Benjamin, Na. Muthukumar, B. H. Abdul Hameed, Anooradha Unni, Elumalai, Chitty Prakash Dhairiyam, Manikanth Kadri, and Anirudh Ravichander. In Madurai: M. P. Balan and C. V. Subramaniam of the TMS Rasikar Manram; and in Colombo: Lucas Tiruchelvam and Jayakrishna of the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation’s Tamil service. Several key people facilitated my entry into the world of the Tamil film music industry in Chennai. V. S. Narasimhan and V. R. Sekar shared their extensive expe- rience and contacts in the film music industry. N. Vamanan generously shared with me on many occasions his exhaustive knowledge of Tamil cinema, its songs and its singers; his insights are key to the early chapters of this book. K. Sundar and xi xii Acknowledgments M. Surveswaran welcomed me into the fellowship of “Vintage Heritage” enthusi- asts and provided me with clips of early song sequences. I am grateful, as well, for the strategically timed and illuminating conversations I had with several individuals during my periods of research in Chennai: Mubeen Sadhika, Thalam Govindarajan, T. M. Krishna, M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, V. Ramji, A. R. Venkatachalapathy, V. A. K. Ranga Rao, Film News Anandan, Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Stephen Hughes, and Anand Pandian. I thank the faculty at New College in Chennai; the Madras Institute of Develop- ment Studies; and the Center for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore for their interest in and support of my research. Several enduring friendships have supported me during the long period I was at work on this book. I am deeply indebted to V. S. Narasimhan and Umayal- puram Mali, consummate musicians both, for their generosity in sharing their musical gifts with me; to S. Shanmugham and S. Bharathi for their warmth and keen intellectual interest in all of my work; and to N. S. Saminathan for his icono- clastic enthusiasm. This work has come to life through conversations with many colleagues. Much of it came into being in dialogue with Constantine Nakassis, who has read every word of the manuscript, some chapters more than once.