From: The Hindustan Times

Variety is the spice of music

(Saibal Chatterjee - New Delhi, March 9, 2005)


It now seems like a long, long time ago. For the better part of the 1990s, blockbusters were known to ride on their music. In order to raise funds, a producer would put together an album of songs and then sell the rights to an established label.

The price the musical score would command in the marketplace used to be enough to see the production of the entire film through. Everything else that the producer earned was a bonus.

The times have changed drastically and film (or non-film) music is no longer a selling proposition. The decline began towards the end of the 1990s. In 1998, the turnover of the music industry in India was nearly Rs 1500 crore. Today, it is down to below Rs 600 crore.

Even musically successful blockbusters like Kal Ho Na Ho, Dhoom and Hum Tum haven't been able to bring the smiles back to the faces of music company head honchos, who have been grappling with mounting losses for years now.

The albums of even commercially successful films no longer manage to recover the investments made on them, let on deliver profits to the investor. At the end of their tether, music companies are now extremely wary of shelling out big bucks for film music, or for that matter any kind of music.

The main reason for the sharp drop in the popular appeal of film music and the dwindling unit sales is the fact that most of the songs that are produced today are either poor copies of sounds that have been heard before or just too monotonous to create any buzz.

New voices, fresh approaches and variety are conspicuous by their absence in the contemporary Indian popular music scene. There was a time when Bollywood would every year throw up at least two or three albums that crossed the 10-million mark. Now no album, not even the ones that blare away at every dance party, does more than two or three million units.

It is probably in this context that the just-concluded Indian Idol contest must be seen. As proven by the consistently high TRPs that the show on Sony Entertainment Television registered, music lovers want a way out of the predictable loop that the music industry has got into.

Unfortunately, even the Indian idol contestants were primarily made to sing songs that belonged to others. The emphasis essentially wasn't on originality or creative thinking. That is where things go wrong when people get down to doing the real thing - recording in a studio. The focus must shift to new sounds, new techniques and new ways of thinking if the gains from the Indian Idol contest are to translate into something truly long-term.

Only a handful of voices rule the roost today and every song that hits the high notes of popularity has begun to sound like all the others. People have begun to tire of this repetitiveness. As a result, alternative music labels like Phat Phish Records, which delivered Rabbi Shergill's super-successful first album a few months ago, is currently engaged in discovering and promoting the wide variety of sounds that are available in this country.

Rabbi's was a voice and sound that was waiting to be discovered. There are many such voices that need the initial shove. The established music labels, given the big bucks that are spent on production and promotion of music, are in position currently to take risks. They are all in the red.

The time has come for Indian popular music, as indeed it has for mass cinema as a whole, to break free from the shackles of crass commercialism and soar into the open skies. Success should be about how many hearts you touch, and not about how many millions you make. When megabucks or sheer vanity are all that you run after, you earn neither money nor applause.

What is needed is a return to the basics. Music to the ears must also be music for the soul. And that, sadly, is an all too rare occurrence these days.

And then they blame it on piracy.

The music of course has changed, so has the life style. Earlier, perhaps the only source of entertainment was music. There were no televisions, no satellite radio stations and then only a selected segment of market would work round the clock. As Ameen Sayani had said earlier, every one would be glued to their radio sets.. and now everyone glued to the idiot box and ekta kapoor's serials.

The silver lining to the dark cloud:

The quality of film music deteriorated dramatically in the 80's. Perhaps RDB, Kishore-da and Asha-ji were among the last of the remaining stalwarts. Age had caught up with the "Nightingale of India". Manna Dey had virtually 'disowned' his sustenance, aghast at the excesses. The great composers had passed on. And with them an era had also passed.

Film-music lost its appeal to listeners who had been weaned on the elixir of the earlier decades. But they did not altogether give up on popular music. Instead they turned to other sources. Ghazals became mainstream, and for the first time non-film ghazal tracks were featured on Binaca Geetmala.

As with anything that becomes popular, there came about a surfeit of ghazals, leading to over-exposure of this genre of music and resultant "listener-fatigue". Their classical knowledge, the grasp of the Urdu language and the melodiousness of Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali gave way to a plethora of pedestrian 'so-called' ghazal-singers out to make hay while the sun shines.

In response to market trends, the issue of ghazal-albums also receded. And ghazal lovers retreated to the safe haven of the poetic gems and timeless voices of the past. Begum Akhtar and Talat Mahmood were familiar, reliable and constant companions --- permanent glowing stars of that firmament.

Some of us explored what is termed 'Fusion' or "New Age' music. An eclectic mix of classical ragas and mod music translated in electronic format. We may have found it "interesting' but not necessarily stimulating or appealing to the heart.

Some others fell upon their scanty knowledge of classical music derived from old film-songs, to try and build upon it by exploring pure-classical forms.

Occasionally, the heart would skip a beat upon hearing some film-song. But such instances became rarer.

And so we reversed course. Back to the earlier decades. If nothing appealing was forthcoming in the present, we might as well seek lost or undiscovered treasues of the past!

Our forum is a perfect example of this journey where music-lovers progress by retreating. It is astonishing and heartening to see our young membership arduously seeking musical quality in the face of peer-pressure to keep up with the times. Especially, when you are constantly pummeled with a barrage of stunning visuals accompanied by the rhythm of thumping beats or tugging at your heart-strings with the plaintive wail of a violin.

To appreciate the emotional significance of the 'charkha' in the presence of "cutting-edge technology" calls for discriminative values.

Hopefully our numbers will multiply. The film-music industry just may get a wake-up call. That imposing their whims and marketing fancies has reached a dead-end. That, in the absence of a conscious and concerted effort to raise the quality of music, their glossy products will remain on the shelves. That their lethargy in the creative process for the pursuit of instant gratification is suicidal to their own interests.

Then only shall we hear again what could be termed as "meaningful" or "appealing" music.

Thank you Unniji
That was beautifully written

I remember being light-heartedly teased by relatives / friends for being a Rafisaab fan and not in touch with the times esp if you did not like Madonna, Michael Jackson, George Michael etc.

i think ppl have made their life very fast they wanna fast music that too which can come fast in their life and go away faster.

if u apply this to english music the problem is same ppl still luv to listen elvis and beatles not britney or eminem.new ablums come and go away from our life forever.



HAAZARON SAAL NARGIS AAPNE BENOORI PE ROOTI HAI
BADI MUSHKIL SE HOTA HAI CHAMAN MEIN DEEDAWAR PAIDA

With most of the attention (deservedly so) paid to the incomparable singers and music directors of the songs we all love so much, the role of the lyricist sometimes fades into the background. To me, these were not songwriters (much less filmy), rather they were poets in their own right. A lot of the songs we like could be enjoyed just as poetry, with no singers or music directors.

Since the basis for poetry is language, the simpler the language has gotten due to convenience, the lesser is the quality of lyrics and lyricists. The best proof of this are the singers who have lasted in both the golden and modern eras who, despite their obvious talents, found it hard to make songs memorable (and thus last).

Socha apney khayalaat pesh kar doon. Agar chhota munh badhhi baat ho gayi toh lihaaz kar dein.