Bollywood Music is running out of ideas and it’s shameful!
It’s been 2 years since I arrived in Seattle, and I must admit that even in just my first 3 months here I had started to feel like I was getting massively out of touch with Bollywood. At the time I thought to myself that it was no big deal, since most of the stuff being produced these days is crap. But when you’ve grown up loving Bollywood movies with such an abiding passion, it becomes hard to let go.
Ever since Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram became your visiting cards, mine have always read ‘Bollywood Fanatic’, ‘Fully Filmy’, ‘Hindi Film Aficionado’ and the likes. I grew up in a family of filmmakers and musicians, and at one point of time music was what I wanted to do in life. But as they say, life is what happens to you when you’re busy planning other things. I moved towards marketing and digital media, but always continued making music that I keep uploading on my social media channels. Same with visual arts. I actually signed up for a few video courses at my master’s program at the University of Washington to understand my passion in a more professional and astute manner. All this is just to give you a glimpse of my passion for movies / music.
Coming back to the point, as a once-aspiring and now-semi-pro-hobbyist musician but a highly professional listener, the slow disintegration of Bollywood’s music scene into absolute lethargy, absence of originality, and selfishness is not boding too well with me. Part of the reason is that I am a lover of classic Hindi music — R.D. Burman, his predecessors Shankar-Jaikishan and Naushad Saab, Kalyanji-Anandji who spanned across eras, and their successors like Jatin-Lalit and Viju Shah being my musical inspirations and idols. To watch their work being desecrated for the purpose of reaping commercial benefits, in my opinion, is one of the most dishonest things musicians can do.
Does this mean that I am against ALL remixes? Absolutely not. In fact, there was a time during the early 90s when Instant Karma, Bally Sagoo and the likes came out with remixes of Roop Tera Mastana, Baahon Mein Chalo Aao, and other such evergreen hits, and they put a fun twist on the original whilst retaining the ‘mood’. In the early 2000s, DJ Aqeel and DJ Suketu hit the scene with their take on Disco 82, Keh Doon Tumhe, Yeh Waada Raha etc., which were super enjoyable too. In fact, in a way, they revived some cult hits by re-introducing those songs to a new generation that hadn’t heard of the originals, and for that I give these artists their due credit.
Even coming to Bollywood, there would be an odd remix here or there to fit the situation of the movie, which was fine. In my opinion (and I actually did an undergrad thesis on this), things took a turn for the worse when movies started being named after old songs. Between 2008–2014, we saw a lot of such films like Bachna Ae Haseeno, Ek Main Aur Ek Tu, Aa Dekhen Zara, Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani etc. Obviously, since the purpose of using these titles was to evoke familiarity among Bollywood viewers, the producers went a step ahead and also included remixes of the namesake songs in many of these. And overall, the industry moved in a direction where remixes started becoming more commonly acceptable. And why wouldn’t they be? They were easier to produce, cost less, and the familiarity made them short-term hits on radios, at college festival circuits, wedding functions, and on music channels. In 2017 alone, Bollywood movies had a total of 30 remixes, and the number seems to be growing since.
I have several big contentions with the kind of remixes being produced today. Firstly, they are not being recreated tastefully. You could tell me that “Hey, taste is subjective”. Sure it is, but if you’re destroying the musicality of a composition and just inserting some new-age beats to make people dance, then where is the soul of the song? Musicians know that a song is much more than the melody or music. There is a certain mood and emotion to it which takes into account what the song is trying to convey and what situation is it being composed for. Accordingly, interludes are written, music is arranged, and instruments are chosen appropriately. But with remix, all that goes out of the window.
My second big contention is that Bollywood is supposed to be one of the world’s most creative industries. It is certainly the largest film industry in the world in term of the volume of movies produced per year and the subsequent viewership. Is this the best, then, that these creative people can produce? Where we losing our art? I am sure that there are several thousands of talented musicians in the country, and they can be found everywhere from Instagram to YouTube. I’d recommend producers scout those channels to find genuinely talented musicians who can produce originals. But of course, we’ve seen how lobbying and favoritism works in Bollywood (RIP SSR). It is EXTREMELY difficult for any outsider to break into the industry. Hence, we consume the crap that we are served by the rulers and custodians of this industry.
My third contention is that the ones who are getting their claim to fame as a result of these remixes are the remix artists, and not the original artists. Honestly, without the original there would be nothing to remix. I believe that the original composers are owed a due, and simply mentioning their name on the 10th line of a YouTube description isn’t enough. It is the bare minimum.
I know that I have ranted out enough today, but as a musician, it deeply hurts me to not only see songs being stripped off their sanctity, but also for the fact that an entire upcoming generation is a developing a taste on the basis of these tracks. And as for the producers, composers, singers, directors — the entire focus remains on just taking the easy way out to make quick money.
Written on 11/11/20
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