Miss Use
A Survey of Raunchy Bhojpuri Music Album Covers

4. The VCD era

By the 2000s or so, the Bhojpuri music industry was to move from audiocassettes to video CDs. With this, this audio category got converted into an audio-video category. This media thus began to be played at more homes on television sets rather than on portable cassette players and audio decks of taxis and trucks. This resulted in familes, and more women consuming this media. The production of huge number of videos to accompany the audio tracks also linked this media to the glamour industry as more models, actors and dancers began to be employed, rather than mostly singers and musicians. The increased interaction with the mainstream media and entertainment industry also brought in new influences to the VCD album. All these factors sparked off new trends in this media:

Trend of the sex symbol/“item girl” as the album cover girl

In some of the VCD album covers, the cover girl is a prominent sex symbol or an “item girl” from the mainstream glamour industry (see images # 7, 18, 23, 56, 57). This move from the use of unknown models to recognizable starlets signifies the self-proclamation of Bhojpuri media as now having become a part of popular consciousness. The image of the sex symbol was however often used without copyright permission and she never actually featured in the accompanying videos.

The “item girl” tag derives from the “item song” placed in ‘masala’ Hindi films for the sheer purpose of sexual titillation. This song sequence often has no relation to the main plot line and is performed by a prominent sex symbol (subsequently referred to as the “item girl”), in her only appearance in the film. These “item songs” were commonly based on raunchy folk song and dance formats and depicted the sexual object as an unrestrained female folk performer [For example: “Maine Aai UP Bihar Lootne”(“I have come to rob UP and Bihar); Film: ‘Shool’ (1999) – the film is credited for starting off the whole “item number” trend]. The appropriation of “tribal” sexual identity by mainstream media has been a common practice for long, however, in a new twist, regional media reclaimed this depiction to add to its own glamour quotient (see image # 23).

The “center girl”, “indicator girls” and “actual girls"

Since the cover girl on most VCD albums did not appear in the accompanying videos, she served the same purpose as the cassette cover girl: to dish up allure and serve as a visual “indicator” of the album’s content and its intended audience. However in this larger square VCD format, the main album cover girl is also surrounded by video grabs of characters and situations from the accompanying videos that serve to indicate the “actual” content in the album. The “indicator” images are often freely recycled: the central picture from one cover becomes the side picture in other albums (Compare image # 31 with # 24; and # 12 with # 18 and 53).

The conversion to the VCD format also ushered this media into the digital age, in the way the songs are outputted and also in the manner that the album covers are designed. As design software began to be used to compose the album covers, we see a free appropriation of images deriving from a culture of “copy-paste” from soft archives and image banks accessible at a click. This reusing of images was also a way to reduce production costs as increased piracy (in itself a consequence of the digital medium) forced music labels to make their product almost as cheap as the pirated copy in order to defeat the practice.

The expansion of Bhojpuri media forced it to be more careful about copyright issues. The trend of featuring prominent sex symbols without permission was stopped. In time, the convention of the central cover girl also got diluted. Instead of a stylized “indicator” image of a cover girl, several video grabs of starlets actually featuring in the videos were compiled along with computer graphics to make up the cover. (Images # 16-18 bear the convention of the “center girl”, while # 19-22 are examples of album covers where the central cover girl has given way to a mélange of stills of starlets featuring in the music videos.)

The neo-traditional trend

Vamp-ish urban women had overtaken the rural archetype on the cassette covers after the advent of photographic covers. However, in one phase of the production of the VCD album, there is confusion about the rural/urban identity of the sexualized cover girl (see # 16 to 22). In some cases, the idealized fantasy woman is a prominent city model attired as a rural woman, and in others, she is an unknown vernacular damsel styled to look like a westernized urban woman (compare # 23 and 24 – two albums with the same title). Yet in other cases it is women in fusion dressing or neo-traditional attire that gives them a cosmopolitan outlook (see # 25 and 26).

The revival of the rural archetype on one hand could be attributed to the trend of “item song/ girls” propagating a sexed up version of this stereotype; but we also see a more sober version of this type in the form of the neo-traditional look. This dressing style has become a vogue amongst young women from an affluent middle class in the cities, especially on occasions of marriages and traditional ceremonies. Music labels also claim an invisible women customer base at the same time. Hence, this series of publications idealizing the classical woman is probably also targeted at this latent customer base in addition to the more customary male clientele.

#34. 2 in one: THUMKA + CHOLI RESHAM KI #35. JAWANI BHAEEL CHIKHNA #36. CHOLI MEIN DOL BAJE The above VCD albums reflect the revival of the “rural ideal” that had disappeared after the advent of photographic covers. # 34: The illustrated image makes a comeback on this cover bringing back the vision of a lost ideal from the ‘nubile series’. Also notice the image of the married couple on the throne-like seats, inset above, and the dancing girls in synchronized outfits behind the main dancer, inset below. Such scenes are taken from wealthy marriage ceremonies portrayed in several blockbuster films that became a trend in the 1990s ('Hum Aapke Hain Kaun!', 1994 and 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge', 1995) # 35: The rural woman in a pose of rapture superimposed on a picture of rural landscape harks back to the painted image of the classical sensuous woman from the ‘nubile series’. The bursting-bubble reads: ‘Vishesh Akarshan – Sabke Chahi Patibrata Mehariya’ (Special Attraction – Everyone want a devoted wife). The inset image portray interesting depictions: Top – a woman applying lipstick while facing a man attired as a “city mister”; Below – A woman holding her ears in a pose of pleading forgiveness to a man who looks like a rural guy. The singer herself has been portrayed as a traditional woman (bottom left), but her posture, her gaze and her untied hair exude a self-confidence, rather than a rural coyness. So far, in this more or less chronological survey, the albums featured only bear the name of the singer on the cover and it is invariably a female. From the ‘nubile series’ till now, this is the first photographic appearance of the singer on the cover. # 36: The women on this cover are more in the neo-classical mould: attired traditionally but exuding an “urban” confidence. These women also have a male companion is some pictures. In the ‘nubile series,’ the man was completely absent. However, in this neo-traditional trend, the eligible male always accompanies the nubile rural woman.