NARRATION THROUGH SONGS IN VISHAL BHARDWAJ’S FILMS- OMKARA

Abstract

Music is integral to Indian culture and customs and is effectively used in numerous Indian performance styles to enhance storytelling such as Parsi theatre, Marathi tamasha, Bengali music drama, etc. Gregory D. Booth states that “Parsi theatre, Marathi tamasha, Bengali music drama, Jatra, Nautanki, the Rajasthani Khayal, the Manch (stage), and Gujarati Bhavani; all accentuated music and dance” (Booth, 1995). This paper suggests music has successfully strengthened narratives since its beginning in 1931 and is a strong link between music and story-telling, in Hindi Films. In films, a director’s constant effort is to create a film that the audience can relate to themselves. Each director has his way of conveying the story to his audience, primarily known as Narrative structure. For visual impact, adding the atmosphere of particular customs, places, dialogues in the language of a particular place, clothes/costumes according to the story, and the language of a native place plays an important role in narrating the story. But, including music can enhance and expand the meaning of visual images. The music has the potential to highlight specific emotions, develop the narrative situation, and give insights into the characters in a particular scene. This paper attempts to analyze Vishal Bhardwaj’s film songs as an important element in narrative structure. The study explores that audio-visual together provide a wholesome experience in narrating the story. The paper discusses a film named Omkara directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, which is the second film in the trilogy of Shakespeare’s play Othello. The other two are Maqbool and Haider based on Shakespeare’s plays i.e., Macbeth and Hamlet respectively. This paper will see the film Omkara through the lyrics of songs, i.e., what role songs play in taking the story further, the impact of these songs in ornamenting the visuals, musical meanings constructed for a particular scene, song as a significant element of a film and, also, the reason of placing them in a particular situation.

Key words – Omkara , Othello.