Nostalgic Bollywood: Memorable Songs from Films of Love and Devotion (1939-1959)

This sumptuous compilation offers a detailed survey of Indian movie songs from throughout the genre's Golden Age during the 1940s and 50s. While it's easy to associate Bollywood with cheeky voices and cheesy strings, several tracks here remind that early film composers were operating out of more sober classical and folk traditions. The music's roots in bhajan devotional song and folkloric theatrical traditions are also skilfully excavated – as on tracks like the swooning ‘Tu Ram Bajan Kar Prani’ (Sing the Name of Ram) from a 1939 movie dedicated to the 16th-century poet who first translated the Ramayana from Sanskrit to Hindi.

Equally fascinating, however, are the ways in which composers began to incorporate disparate influences in increasingly secular settings, creating singular hybrids of Indian and Western sounds. 1949's ‘Aana Meri Jaan Sunday Ke Sunday’, for example, is a jaunty, jazz-inflected ditty with Benny Goodman-style clarinet and a leading man crooning ‘I love you’ in English. Not just an entertaining time capsule, this wonderful collection contains universes.