Carvaan, a digital portable music player which looks like a transistor radio of yore, in itself conjures up the memories of 1960 and 70s. Marketed by Saregama India, the device plays a collection of 5000 Hindi songs, sung and composed by the renowned maestros.

The Company, earlier known as EMI and later as The Gramophone Company (India) enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the music marketing scene in India till mid 1970s (when Polydor of India came to India) and the company’s repertoire boasts of best of Indian film music besides non film music.

Saregama has made the most of its collection of melodies and the gadget has received excellent response.

This is the season of festivals in India. Recently, we had our Independence Day followed by Raksha Bandhan. Radio stations, TV channels make it a point to celebrate these festivals by playing related songs. All these songs are from old films. Soon we will have Krishna janmashtami and Ganesh festival. The same routine will follow.

There are what is termed as Reality Shows on Television promoting young talented singers. These programs have participants mostly born in 21st Century but, what is their choice of songs? The songs they sing represent an era when, probably, even their parents were not born!

What is it that the composers of latter days and now failed to inspire these aspiring singers? Or Saregama or any other music company use the music of contemporary ‘composers’?

Why have contemporary musicians (the only way to describe them since they can play an instrument or two) not been able to produce memorable music, let alone evergreen melodies? One may blame Western influence. Creating cacophony in the name of music is not Western influence. Because, all our earlier melody making maestros were influenced by music from the West and rest of the world. But, they knew how to create a melody out of a Western tune to suit Indian tastes.

There is an album called Music For the Arabian Nights by Ron Goodwin which has 24 instrumental compositions; almost all of them have been made into Hindi films songs by some of the greatest and most acknowledged composers. Because, they knew music and how to mold it for the Indian ears.

You name the 20th Century music composer and he had Western world songs adapted to his name. Again, I quote Google. It will open a plethora of old Western melodies (evergreen) tuned to Indian tastes.

The melody as well as the composing music to a film’s theme died in mid 1980s. There was no one capable of providing original scores. The trend of copying shifted from West to across the border, Pakistan. A pair of music duo made a career out of it. They had not amounted to anything before they discovered this source despite their over 10 year struggle as wannabe composers.

Not only the composers now but even wording of songs does not inspire either the composer or the listener. Where are the geniuses like Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianvi, Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra, Kaifi Azmi, Bharat Vyas, Anjaan, Indeevar. The last song writer who made his mark was Anand Bakshi who even inspired Javed, a writer turned lyricist for a while. Javed emulated Bakshi’s simple writing.

Now, there is no lyric writer who can pen a memorable song. A lyricist is happy if he manages a decent mukhda, nothing thereafter, no variations. That is, probably, why songs are now used in the background. Gulshan Kumar of T Series, had a policy, he would not touch a film soundtrack iif it had no lip-sync songs.

It was surprising when Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscar for not only the Best Music but also the Best Lyrics. Not a word beyond the opening line of Jai ho… can be heard or made sense of in the cacophonic orchestration of A R Rahman! If maestros of the bygone era lasted and continued to give hit melodies for decades, why is Rahman as good as out of Hindi film music scene? As for Gulzar, he has never been able to match the meaningful lyrics he wrote for films like Aandhi and Mausam.

My observation was that till we had writers using Urdu to write scripts and lyrics, Hindi films were meaningful, successful or otherwise.

The later years of 1980s and 90s were seen through by various composers none of them could deliver lasting tunes except for a film by Karan Johar or Yash Raj Films. The composers took recourse to various distractions like item songs or mixing variety of songs from all regions of India. On their part, the music companies tried to create Music Banks, a collection of songs from various composers. They broke the tradition and used more than one composer for songs in a single film.

Nothing seems to have worked so far.

Originally, songs were an integral part of a film’s story and such songs have stood the test of time. When the creativity died, songs were composed more to promote a film on the television media. They had nothing to do with either the script or the film in general. Such songs were wasted in the titles of a film, either beginning or end titles by which time the people had left!

Now we have remixes as main attraction as film music. This actually amounts to not only slaughtering old hits but also amounts to eating out of others’ creativity. The remix ‘composer’ not only lack musical sense and talent, they are parasites. Somehow, now it has become a tradition to have Punjabi songs and words no matter a film’s relevance to the language!

Earlier, the music makers thought that the Pakistani singers and their Sufi kind of rendition will help. Resultantly, almost all songs from any film from any composer would sound the same. Nobody wanted to discover talent from a vast pool that India offers as has been proved through various reality shows on television.

Gulshan Kumar, who changed the workings of the Indian music industry, went for new talent when he rerecorded old film hits with new singers which was permissible under Section 52 (1) (j) of the Copyrights Act. And, some of them made it to the mainstream as lead singers of which Kumar Sanu and Sonu Nigam turned out to be top rung singers.

Thanks to this new breed of music composers, they fail to come up with a hummable tune, let alone a melody.  Thanks to them, the music industry which, once upon a time, counted on records/cassettes sales and later on CDs, is now dependent on ring tones, caller tunes and whatever royalty their songs get from the hugely manipulated FM channels.

Not so long ago, the music industry attracted new players. Even while the old players, Gramco and Polydor, had retreated, here were ne labels in the foothills of T Series like Venus, Tips, Sony, Zee, Yash Raj, Junglee Music. As things stand now, the only major player is T Series. Venus and Tips have as good as packed up while the rest are peripheral.

@ The Box Office

The last Friday saw the release of two films: Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi and Genius.

Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi was a sequel to a not so memorable Happy Bhag Jayegi. The sequel craze makes little sense. Some work, most don’t. Most of the time, a sequel is just a ruse to use the same old title, what if it has nothing in common with the previous version! Happy of the original!  Replacing the protagonist amounts to taking cinematic liberties a bit too far and taking your audience to be stupid.

The film had a poor opening, with little choice for the moviegoer this week, did a little better over the weekend to collect 11.25 crore. However, remains below average in the final count as the film will close its first week with a little over 17 crore.

*The other release, Genius, was a launch vehicle for the veteran director Anil Sharma’s son, Utkarsh Sharma. Sadly, Sharma chooses an old fashioned theme, from his own era in an effort to showcase his son as a master of all.

The move backfires and the film faces total rejection. Will close its first and last week with a poor 4.5 crore.

*Gold was excellent in its extended first week of nine days, almost touching 100 crore. The mark it achieved in its second week. After an opening week of 87 crore, the film is expected to end its second week business with a total of close to 104 crore.

*Satyamev Jayate has emerged among the best performers in John Abraham’s career. Despite the opposition from Gold, the film managed to hold well. After an extended opening week of 66 crore, it should close its second week with a total of close to 77 crore.