Music: Bollywood vs Western Music! Why female Bollywood singers have mostly high-pitched voices?

Bollywood movies and songs are famous worldwide. They have a global audience and listeners. Its music is different from the Western world. Majority of the people are aware of these differences that characterize the music of these different continents. 

Bollywood vs Western Music

Bollywood music is based on the ancient Indian music that is either North Indian (Hindustani) music or South Indian (Carnatic) music. On the other hand, Western music is either Church Music or Secular Music. Raga and tala are the 2 fundamental elements in Indian music. In Bollywood music, there are single notes or melody that is played in a specific order.  Hence it is homophonic. But Western music has harmony and it uses tonic progression and counterpoint in abundance. A harmony is a group of notes played together. Therefore, it is polyphonic. Western music also has a standardized written notation and one has to play exactly as it is written. Thus it is composed and cannot be changed. But Bollywood music can be improvised. 

Bollywood Music [Source: Du Beat]

In Western Music, Octave is the main element. The Octave is the arrangement of the 7 notes and 5 variations in an increasing pitch. A scale or gamut results that is called Octave. Bollywood music also has 7 notes and 5 variations called Saptaka.  In Western music, there are only 2 sets of pitch ratios between the notes. It is major and minor. But in Bollywood as per Indian music, there are different pitch ratios for the notes in different scales. It has a more complex system of scales.

Bollywood music has Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni and Western has Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti. The latter has 7 notes in a scale and 12 notes complete an octave. 

Vocals and Instrumentation

In Bollywood music, when there are vocals, the instruments are mere accompaniments to them. Tanpooras act like drones and harmoniums follow the voice tonality. And in Western music, instrumentation has a lot of weightage in the composition along with the vocals. Vocals are an addition to the overall composition. 

Voice in Bollywood music means human voice. But in Western music, voice is a generic term. It can be any theme which is played by a musical instrument. For example, a four-voice fugue can be played on a piano with two hands. 

Western Music [Source: Ganna]

In Bollywood music, there is a lead vocalist and others are accompaniment or used during the interlude. But in Western music, it is more of a group effort except in solo concerts. Taal is a repetitive beat cycle in Bollywood but does not exist in Western music. 

The unspoken difference

All the above differences are known to the majority of the people. But there is one difference in Western Music and Bollywood music which exists but not many mention about it. It is unspoken of but I am going to talk about it here. It is related to the vocals and voice quality of the singers in Bollywood music. 

Most if not all of the female singers in Bollywood music have a high-pitched voice unlike that in Western music, where there is more diversity as regards the voice quality. In Western music, you will find females with four types of voices; soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, and contralto. While you will hear Soprano and mezzo-soprano voices in Bollywood, there is almost none who is singing with alto or contralto voices (maybe Ila Arun and Usha Uthup). But they could never make it big in Bollywood.

Usha Uthup [Source: Shevlin's World Blog}

Usha had said in an interview after she won her first Filmfare award in 2012 for her song Darling: 

"Bollywood did not give me many chances to do playback singing because there is a preconceived notion that a heroine should have a high-pitched voice. So, singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, K.S. Chitra, Sujatha Mohan or P. Susheela were preferred, instead of Begum Akhtar, Reshma and I, who have low bass voices."

She added: 

"It is strange: for example, [the late actress] Meena Kumari had a low bass voice when you listened to her dialogues, but when she sang it was in the high-pitched voice of Lata Mangeshkar."

What is the reason for the preference for a high-pitched voice in Bollywood? 

Questions on this have also been raised in Quora and Reddit communities online. Though there has been no accurate answer provided, there have been some hilarious answers there. One of them has replied that it is due to the culture of India that believes strongly that females have to be feminine. Hence they have to have a high-pitched and small voice that is considered feminine. The person adds that if a female voice in there was low-pitched it would sound less docile and more powerful and hence less feminine. She concludes well thus: 

"In my humble opinion, low pitched and medium pitched female voices are so powerful, and simply rock. They are the voices of the 21st century."

Another person opined that it is due to eating more chillies and less meat. Another professional musician has stated that it is due to the overtly patriarchal society of India. And Bollywood is stereotypical. Films portray usually extreme forms of manliness and femaleness. The actor is over-macho while the female is excessively docile. Another person has said that high-pitched voice is young and sweet and since heroines are young and sweet, high-pitched singers sing for her!!! She adds that low-pitched voices are of vamps and negative characters. Do you agree? 

But jokes apart, seriously, why are there not many alto voice singers in Bollywood? 

Please provide answers in the comments section of the box below!!! We would love to hear about it.