Eleven tunes capturing the zeitgeist of Mumbai throughout the eras.
Mumbai is a complex and multifaceted city, but it is also a city of stories told, often as not, through songs. You could never capture every part of the city’s character in one finite list, so I’ve assembled eleven tunes, each a vignette from a different place or time in Mumbai’s exuberant life story. The majority of these songs come from Bollywood, the spectacularly productive Hindi film industry that has both captured and set the joyous pulse of the city for nearly a century. Only in Mumbai could the melancholy tune of ‘Oh, My Darling Clementine’ be reimagined as a gleeful frolic through an urban fantasy, as it was for the 1956 film CID by the distinguished songwriter Majrooh Sultanpuri and composer OP Nayyar. “Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan” (This is Bombay, my love) has since become the city’s unofficial anthem: an ode to its freewheeling spirit, its unending draw, the dream that it represents even when it fails to deliver.
Continue reading
Access this and all our other premium articles by joining our membership program. Plans start at $6.50 per month and include twice-weekly digital features, access to in-person events, and more.
