2015 will be remembered as the year when the popularity of music remained inversely proportional to the performance of the film at the box office. Of course, every year comes up with an Aashiq Banaya Aapne or a Yaariyaan but this year the list of flop films with hits songs is long. “Khamoshiyaan” had some of the best compositions of the year composed by Jeet Ganguly but the film remained silent at the box office. “Pidli Si Batein” by Ilayaraja created a flutter that “Shamitabh” failed to match. Then came “Roy”, where Ankit Tiwari’s “Tu Hai Ki Nahin” made brooding a trendy emotion so much so that the effervescent “Chittiyaan Kalaiyaan” by Meet Bros Anjjan sounded like a song from a different album. It remained a constant feature at weddings through the year but after a couple of months people forgot the film that it belonged to.
“Hamari Adhuri Kahaani” consolidated the trend. Mithoon and Jeet Ganguly’s compositions had all the strands of melancholy and pathos but the box office fate of the film was equally sad. Devi Sri Prasad’s catchy “Daddy Mummy” kept playing on FM stations through the year but one has to google to find that the song belongs to a dud called “Bhaag Johnny”. “Mata Ka e-mail”, arguably the most fun song of the year, came from “Guddu Rangeela”. Do you even know that it was composed by Amit Trivedi. The spirited composer was hit the most by this trend.
He had an unusually jinxed year for what preceded and followed ‘Guddu Rangeela’ can’t be ignored. “It has been a roller coaster year. I have been very proud of ‘Bombay Velvet’ and ‘Shaandaar’ but unfortunately both the films haven’t worked,” says Amit, who emerged on the scene with “Dev.D”.
“I don’t like when the films don’t work,” says Amit, “because you work towards a film. When the film sails through you also sail through. When only music works it is not something I get excited about. But it is not something in my hand.” He is particularly proud of his score in “Bombay Velvet” as he was working on it for four years. “Post ‘Dev.D’ I was working on Bombay Velvet . It was about recreating 50s and 60s era jazz for today’s audience and jazz is not very India friendly music. So to create jazz and make it accessible to audience of Bollywood films was something I took as a challenge and I think I managed to recreate that era. I am very happy with the end result.” He picks “Dhadaam Dhadaam” and “Behrupiya” from the film as his favourites. As for “Gulabo”- led “Shaandaar”, Amit says it was something which was in his realm. “It is typical commercial Hindi film music, something I cannot go wrong with.”
As a listener, Amit, incidentally, chooses from films which have done well commercially this year. “I liked Rahman’s ‘Agar Tum Saath Ho’ from ‘Tamasha’, Sachin Jigar’s compositions for ‘Badlapur’ and ‘Banno Tera Swagger’ from ‘Tanu Weds Manu Returns’.”
Well, music that has shelf life continues to live on. We still hum “Chandan Sa Badan”, we still listen to “Falak Tak Chal” and “Ghar Se Nikalte Hi” still stops us in the tracks.
Driven by the narrative
The year also saw the clichéd and the insightful being used to create magic. Even when we thought we have heard the last of Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik, the voices of the 90s returned with films which had no hangover of the filmmaking style of the 90s. Yagnik impressed with “Agar Tum Saath Ho” in “Tamasha” and Sanu scored a winner with “Dard Karara” in “Dum Laga Ke Haisha”. On one hand when the film music is getting increasingly divorced from the script, there are glorious exceptions like “Tanu Weds Manu Returns” where Vayu effortlessly added ‘swagger’ to Hindi lexicon and Rajshekhar’s Haryanvi twist to “I Am A Old School Girl” made the simple song profound. Similarly, even before we recovered from the spell cast by ‘Moh Moh ke Dhaage’ (“Dum Laga Ke Haisha”), lyricist Varun Grover invoked the revolutionary poetry of Chakbast and Dushyant Kumar, verses which are usually considered unfit for popular idiom, to build the mood of “Masaan”. The flutter of young heart has seldom been described as “Tu Kisi Rail Si Guzarti Hai, Main Kisi Pul Sa Thartharata Hun” in a Hindi film but the song found ears. And towards the end of the year when Sanjay Leela Bhansali composed A.M Turaz’s “Tujhe Yaad Kar Liya Hai Aayat Ki Tarah” for “Bajirao Mastani”, the syncretic roots of Hindi film music got strengthened.
Flood of festivals
Bollywood music is no longer the behemoth that you can’t compete with. The number of music festivals is increasing. From Magnetic Fields to Parvati Peaking, Indian is embracing independent music festivals like never before. You can count 25 in one go and the big ones like Sunburn and Supersonic are fighting it out for premium dates sending the traffic in Goa to a tizzy. Every genre is finding a space and big names kept knocking at Indian doors through the year. From Afrojack and Magdeth to Slash, the country jived to the best in the business. So much so that that a big label like Universal bought 50 percent stake in Enchanted Valley Carnival, one of the most sought after in terms of the variety that it offers.
“I’ve always said and believed that the live experiential music space is only growing and expanding to horizons that were unimaginable a few years ago. 2015 saw some massive hits in the business of music festivals and I’m glad that we’re all headed towards the right direction. We’re the first label in the country to venture in the festival space and we plan to expand our portfolio as we have a number of exciting things in the pipeline for 2016,” says Devraj Sanyal, Director and CEO of Universal Music & EMI Music, South Asia. Spelling out the takeaways from the year, Devraj says, “The brands have started having more faith in us to communicate the correct message to their followers. The other takeaway would be the fact that this year has been great for artist bookings. We all have collectively signed on some of the biggest names and put India right on the map where we deserve to be.”
He feels India is ready to embrace different genres of music other than big room. “We introduced hard style this year at BEVC and dedicated a stage to live experimental music and the numbers on each of these stages were outstanding. Also, there is a niche crowd that follows underground music currently and I see those numbers only rising within the next 2-3 years.”
Experimental space
MTV’s Coke Studio continues to be the alternative for those looking for blend between the folk roots and the rock beats. At times it hurt emotions like in the case of “Rangabati” where Sona Mohapatra re-rendered the traditional Sambhalpuri folk song tweaked by Ram Sampath. Jitendra Haripal, who sang the original version in the ‘70s., doesn’t buy the argument that the new version is appealing to the young generation. “The song is a cultural icon something that reminds them of their roots. Do the youngsters ask for Red Fort or Taj Mahal to be painted in a different colours because they have been bored of them?” asks Haripal. However, the same year saw something like “Teriya Tu Jaane Na” and “Chaudhary” by Amit Trivedi. “‘Chaudhary’ is one of the most special tracks that I have been part of. It was composed in five minutes, written in four minutes. Overall, in 15 minutes the song was ready. Many people thought it to be an old Rajasthani folk song, it was not. People take old folk songs and recreate. We thought let’s create a new folk song and then give it to the State. It went really well.”
Baadshah rules
It was also the year when rapper Baadshah outclassed his mentor Honey Singh at the turnstiles in more ways than one with “DJ waley Babu” and “Aaj Raat Ka Scene”. His critics kept on saying that the songs are suggestive and titillating but the rapper maintains that they are entertaining. “I am considered the man for party music and till youth are not offended by my compositions, I am not going to change track.” Well, if you look around he is not wrong for his songs are played at birthday parties and weddings. A matter of taste?
