The song synopsis booklet is an early to mid-twentieth-century paratextual film ephemera from the Indian sub-continent. It is a cheaply produced multisensorial object that surpassed the existence of extremely flammable nitrate film reels, bringing together printed text, illustration, photography, and song lyrics to evoke the visual, haptic, and aural promises and pleasures of the new mass medium of cinema. The immediate antecedents to the song booklet are theatre chapbooks, religious hymn booklets, astrological almanacs, and joke books. With the flourishing of film production in the subcontinent, song booklets from the 1920s onward feature spectacular combinations of text, drawings, full colour photo illustrations, typographical flourishes, ornamental decoration, and film stills. These booklets include plot synopses, cast and crew credits, song lyrics, production stills, and advertisements for upcoming films, many of which were never made, so that the only traces that remain are these promotional images. What makes Indian film song booklets different from film paraphernalia and playbills elsewhere in the world is their inclusion of the lyrics for songs, which are a key element of popular Indian cinema, an aspect most remembered and memorialized by audiences, thus creating a different register for materiality and circulation histories. The booklets feature advertisements for film equipment, studios, and lists of former or upcoming productions. Through a side-by-side display of narrative and industrial attractions, these cheaply produced ephemera are located, like the films they promote, at the intersections of the fields of visuality and aurality of the narrative spectacle, art and commerce.
Gathering influences from different kinds of cinema booklets and other promotional objects from across the world, the song synopsis booklet came on its own, earning the status of a rare collectible over the course of time. Traversing the history of over eight decades, the booklet has evolved from theatre advertisements to Hollywood cinema handbills and synopsis booklets of the silent era to the song synopsis booklet, an object intrinsically unique to the Indian sensibilities.