Listening To The Classics Of Bollywood, Dobara

“Oh God, one more remix!” is the line which was followed by the new Simmba hit, Aankh Marey.
It isn't just the 2010s that have seen the remakes of old Bollywood classics in movies or by artists in general. Going back to the early 2000s, an era of not just Bollywood music but solo artists such as Bombay Vikings and DJ Aqeel, with their various remixes and remakes of classics such as Chodh Do Aanchal and Keh Doon Tumhe respectively. Yet, it was just these numbers that popped up every once in a while in an otherwise original music scene. In the years to follow, there would still be a few tracks here and there that would be known as “party remixes” of the retro songs.

Jump to the decade nearing 2010. Taking the hook from the classic Kishore Kumar song, we got the pop hit Bachna Ae Haseeno in 2008, from the movie of the same name, where the duo Vishal-Shekhar cleverly used the catchy lines that made the song a big hit amongst the masses. Sadly, this was a technique that had come to stay. 2012 saw another big hit that went by the name The Disco Song, with the new favourite catch-a-hook technique used on the Nazia Hassan hit, Disco Deewane, in the teen favourite, Student Of The Year. Now I can go on and name another dozen or more of such songs, but with the popularity of Ankh Maarey, Mere Rashke Qamar, Hawa Hawa, Tamma Tamma Again and so on, I can proceed to my point, that it is nothing less than a plague, a disease in which originality is defeated by the virus of desires to make a hit, money making, Bollywood number.

Don't get me wrong, there has been, since time immemorial, the practice of making covers or paying tributes to legendary musicians and their works. What bothers me, and I am sure a lot of people out there, is how there is this trend on the rise where music composers are making music not with the aim of creating something that will touch hearts, sway souls and be meaningful enough to make someone feel like they can relate to a piece of music, to make someone feel understood through the art of music, but instead, the aim is now to make item numbers or party hits that will get them money, get the movie the attention it needs to flood in the audience in the theatres and the like. While there is nothing wrong at all in marketing your movies or trying various ways to earn money, of course, thats your career and your job, it doesn't mean we can turn a blind eye to the lack of originality and the abundance of greed and laziness that seems to be taking over this industry.

Being someone who turns to music when nothing is good enough to express how I feel, it does bother me that we are now entering an age where the top hits of the charts are just beat laden songs that were created beautifully decades ago. It does worry me that by the time we grow old, our “retro” would be the “re-retro” and not pieces of music that had touched us but pieces of music we danced to in every other party. This isn't to say that there are no original songs whatsoever. I am highly thankful there are still tracks like Dilbaro (Raazi) or even Cutie Pie (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil) for that matter, which was, at least as far as I know, a non plagiarised dance number. While there are these tracks as well, it does pain me to see how dominated Bollywood, an industry I grew up associating myself with, is by such remakes.

Honestly, India has so much talent hidden in her, in her people and in their voices, it would be remiss to let this trend continue and miss out on some amazing music that the people are capable of creating and subsequently, impacting people and touching their hearts.

On my part, I tend to not pay much attention to such remakes, so there is one less person encouraging the use of this “technique”. I can only hope it works!