CASSETTES IN INDIA – DEMOCRATIZING MUSIC AND A PIRACY EMPIRE

Introduction

The name Lou Ottens may not ring a bell to many. It should, especially if your ears are musically inclined. He revolutionised music the world over with his invention of the compact audio cassette. He died in his native Holland at the age of 94 on March 6.The compact cassette, invented in 1963 by Lou Ottens at the Netherlands-based electronics firm Philips, was a miniaturized version of the bulky reel to reel tapes (“spools”) that had been available since the 1950s. The large spools never really became a mass commodity outside of the elite Western market, since the players were bulky and not simple to operate. You couldn’t, for instance, carry a spool player in a bag slung over your shoulder, or tote it by hand. If mishandled or moved slightly, the tape could slip and twist, coming loose from the player and sometimes damaging the recording. Cassettes revolutionized the music industry in India equally . However the debate remains – Did it democratize music or create a new piracy issue ?

Democratizing music : Cassette onset

A prominent factor of the Indian music system was its hegemony prior to the cassette boom . The act of listening was monopolised by a few companies and common man was largely excluded from listening to music . For an extended period, HMV, now known as the Gramophone Company of India, was the sole player in the market. It invested considerable time and resources into establishing an elaborate record pressing facility, which led to its failure to recognize the impending surge of cassettes that was developing just beyond its reach.

The uniformity of aesthetics also needs to be noted in the context . The popular Bollywood hindi film music dominated the stores and the entire music industry . There were primarily five main singers around which the entire music industry revolved as has been noted – Asha Bhosle, Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh, and most prominently, Lata Mangeshkar—who held sway for over three decades. The use of Lata Mangeshkar’s voice and it’s repertoire was an attempt to appeal to a pan Indian audience . In such an industry the folk music found itself widely distanced from any kind of exposure and the hegemony of North Indian folk music prevailed .

All of that however changed with the onset of the cassette . Not only the way people listened to music but also the way music was produced was changed as well . Thus a change and transfer in how content is generated and consumed both took a different turn .

Consumption of Music

The cassette culture changed the way music was consumed by the listeners. Previously the gramophone and the vinyl records were ideally expensive and music was not meant for the masses.

Cassettes gave away a new form of consumption of music which was not only cheap but reliable as well . The reproductibility of cassettes was the primary giveaway point of cassettes . The masses which were previously exempted from the music had found a rather cheap and accessible way of consuming music be it from Chandni Chowk of Delhi or streets of Bombay . Even if taken content wise cassettes changed the type of content which was being produced . Especially when folk music and regional devotional music also came into being with the ease of re-recording the type of content consumed changed .

Rizwanur Rahman, another Professor in JNU Campus recalls I first saw audio cassettes in 1985. Back then, only pre-recorded ones were available ,no blank cassettes. They came in 30-minute, 1-hour, and later 2-hour formats. Sometimes the tape would get stuck, and we had to fix it manually.

Md Qutbuddin ( professor in JNU campus) also says , When I compare that old technology to today’s digital systems, I still feel a deep sense of nostalgia. Audio cassettes and tape recorders were simple, portable, and personal. You could carry them anywhere and play your favorite songs anytime. Even though we now have smartphones and streaming services, that special feeling of holding a cassette and playing it can’t be replaced.

Diversity in Production of Music

The production of music also changed manifolds . cassettes gave away rise to various form of music . Be it devotional music or folk music or other regional parodies of songs . Devotional music carefully strikes a balance between the religious sentiments of people and artis and bhajans and qawalis which have been recognized as film hits . Mass sales were also noted from housewives who were the routine consumers of Satyanarayan Katha .

The most impact was however found on the much ignored folk music and the regional music . Producers big and small alike concentrated on production of folk music with either traditional music or modernized formats as termed by then producers . Unlike film music which aimed to homogenize the audience with its repetitive use of sentimental songs, cassette culture was able to celebrate the diversity of folk music with regional lores and customs .

As Mohammed Wajeehuddin (a Senior editor with times of india ) recalls , I first experienced audio cassettes in the early 1980s in my village in Bihar when a relative brought a cassette recorder from the city. Hearing songs on cassette amazed me and sparked my love for music and poetry. Cassettes were more portable and convenient than the large LP records of that time, even though they sometimes malfunctioned. They helped spread music and culture, especially ghazals and poetry, to remote areas.

The third type of content produced were parodies recycling the classics . Manuel groups them into two broad categories: in one case—that of the cover version proper, or in modern Indian parlance, a ‘version’ recording—an extant song is re-recorded, generally by a different label, with different vocalists; the second category consists of cases where a new release uses the melody of an extant hit, but set to a new text. This third type of music was the one which led

the Indian market to be flooded with pirated copies of music and the emergence of a million dollar company.

These parodies were sung by lesser known singers after the release of the original version . What was even more interesting was that under Indian law the production of such music was legally mandated by this section %2 of the Copyright Law . This loophole was exploited by Gulshan Kumar who capitalized on versions of original songs and went on to built T series . This led to not only redistribution of Bollywood music but also diversification of music ownership.

Piracy in cassette culture

Cassettes opened up the huge piracy market of Indian music . Soon after the advent of GulshanKumar various smaller producers utilized the unknown voices and singers to re-record the original music and a new form of piracy flooded the Indian market . With a blank cassette and a cassette recorder, anyone could create their own music.

Cassettes gave a ease of duplication through which music could be easily duplicated on blank tapes . When sound was added to silent movies, the idea of dubbing first appeared in the motion picture business. When dual cassette recorders (for recording from one tape to another) entered the consumer market and it became simple to duplicate one’s favorite album to share from home, cassette culture took on the phrase. Piracy however was a double edged sword for the music industry – The big names lost out on their royalties while the economically downtrodden had now the access to enjoy the art which was hidden from them previously .

The government caught on the act of piracy later . The DAT (digital audio tape) Bill, which limited the quantity of tapes that consumers could purchase and prohibited them from creating copies of copies (also known as the SCMS system), was established in 1989 following failed attempts to tax blank tapes. Rizwanur Rahman further said Blank cassettes became available later and were cheaper. People would copy songs onto them and share them, especially because original cassettes were expensive. In Delhi, English music was popular, but it was costly, so people often shared copied tapes.

Record labels, on the other hand, felt that they should receive a tax, thus it didn’t benefit them. The Audio Home Recording Act, which was introduced in 1991, collected taxes from record producers and media and returned them to companies. Even with these acts and the laws in place the mixtape culture emerged from the cassette culture . This gave a new form of expression to democratization of music and making music always be for the masses .