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 In the west not all films are musical, though some of the finest such as My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music did keep the cash registers ringing, and ringing quite loudly. This explains why cine-goers from Europe and North America found it to his or her amazement that an average South Asia movie was interspersed, or rather punctuated, with songs.
In the subcontinent where singing of bhajans is a part of the religious rituals of the majority community and where one of the plus (or negative) points for a prospective bride was, until not too long ago, her ability (or inability) to sing, music seeped into everyday situations. The theatre of the late 19th and the early 20th century had anything between 10 to 20 songs per play, a tradition that sneaked into the talkies, when the era of the silent movies ended.
In the forties when playback singing facility was introduced, one saw professional singers lending their voices to actors and actresses, who just had to lip sync the songs. Thus the period of good-actors-but-bad singers and bad-actors-but-good-singers came to an end. We got to see great singers like Lata Mangeshkar who sang for every actress - from Madhubala to Madhuri Dixit, before she decided to be choosey.
The three decades - from the forties to the seventies - was what the film historians love to describe as the golden age of film music. Hindi/Urdu films attracted some very talented composers from different parts of the subcontinent, but mostly from Bengal and the Punjab. The two schools had their own stamps. Generally speaking Bengali composers such as R.C. Boral, Anil Biswas, S D Burman, Robin Ghosh and Salil Chaudhry laid emphasis on melody, while rhythm was the hallmark of the compositions of the Punjabi music directors like Ustad Jhanday Khan, Master Ghulam Haider, Pandit Amarnath and O.P. Nayyar. But then there were exceptions. The songs composed by Madan Mohan and Khurshid Anwar were truly melodious though both belonged to the land of the five rivers. A still more noteworthy point is that the film composers from the two sides of the Great Divide have drawn inspiration from different sources be it classical, folk or Sufi music, not to speak of Western music.
It was not just the talented singers and composers who contributed to film music, the great work done by poets such as Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rajendra Krishn, Shakeel Badayuni, Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar and Anand Bakshi, who wrote in Urdu and D.N. Madhok, Shailendra and Neeraj, who penned their lyrics in Hindi, can hardly be over emphasized.
In fact most film songs have been in Urdu, which leads us to the conclusion that lyricists have done a yeoman service to the language by bringing some of the chaste Urdu words on to the lips of the common men and women, including those to whom the language was alien.
On our side of the Wagah border too lyricists, such as Qateel Shifai, Tanveer Naqvi, Saifuddin Saif, Tasleem Fazli and Masroor Anwar, have all enriched film poetry.
Before we proceed further, we must realise that a film song is always more difficult to write than a poem meant for publication or recitation. The reason is twofold - one that the language and imagery are more often than not simple so as to be appreciated by the huge body of listeners, and more importantly, it has to be penned for certain situations, which is why many well known Urdu and Hindi poets could not quite succeed when they attempted film songs. Kaifi Azmi wrote some very fine songs for films but was wise enough to realise that comic songs were not his forte. On the other hand, Sahir Ludhianvi could write a serious song with depth of meanings and at the same time a light number for filming on comedian Johnny Walker with equal ease.
In parallel cinema, or call it art movies if you like, there is not much room for songs. Those who make movies belonging to this genre claim, with a lot of justification, that you don't find people singing songs in real life at home, in a park or on a street. But then film makers belonging to the mainstream cinema in the subcontinent argue that if properly handled songs can facilitate the movement of the plot rather than interrupt it. They can heighten the drama in many scenes. A case in point is Mehboob Khan's Mother India, where the director judiciously used the songs. Every one of its eight songs, composed by Naushad and written by Shakeel Badayuni, increases the visual impact of the scene.
I remember Pervez Malik, the first Pakistan director to be trained abroad, telling me on his return from the U.S. in the sixties that songs were additional tools in the hands of a filmmaker and that he couldn't imagine making a ‘songless movie'. But had he lived long enough to see the so-called item numbers in the Bollywood movies the accomplished film maker may have had a heart attack.
In his heyday 90 per cent sales of recorded music was essentially film music but over the years pop music has become much more saleable in this country, thanks largely to the fading out of the Pakistani cinema. And as for India, with the reduction in the number of songs in movies and the growing popularity of pop singers, the tables have turned. To a very large extent it is also because non-film numbers are also available on videos. You can see the singer as you hear him or her. One can be pretty sure that this trend will go from strength to strength in the years to come. 
The writer is a seasoned journalist and writes on art, literature, travel, music and movies.
Asif Noorani is a senior Pakistani journalist and has written extensively on literary issues and critical analysis of the Arts.
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