Musically Deprived

There's a new kid on the block who's caught the nation in a spin. As hot as the Mumbai summer and as popular as vada-pav, this new sensation has turned the country's radio stations upside down. His name...is Himesh Reshammiyya. For the love of god, he seems to be everywhere. All we hear is Resham ga ga. No matter where I go and no matter who I meet, his voice can heard in the distance (and closer home too). He is God's biggest rival when it comes to being all around the place. Amazingly popular.

Personally though, I'm no great fan of the guy. He has certainly redefined music but that's not a redefinition I'd beg to agree with. His voice is too nasal and his themes are as rhetorical and boring as an election speech. And I'm seriously bugged with hearing him everywhere. For some reason radio stations cant seem to find anything to play but the Himesh Hour. I recently met this character who had aspirations of becoming an RJ. I told him that I would listen to his show (if he got one) only if he played stuff other than Himesh. He stared at me and said "But Amogh, dude, Himesh is the only thing we got! He is the only guy who seems to be constantly producing hit after hit. What else can people listen to?"

I gaped at him for a few seconds and then asked him which nutcase put such an idea into his head. "Have you even heard some of the music that's produced in this country?" I asked him. He asked me to give him some examples. I told him to go to the Thermal and a Quarter website and download one of their albums through BitTorrent. (For the uninitiated, Thermal and a Quarter is a Bangalore-based band that has written some of the most amazing songs I've heard). I also told him to check out the Parikrama and Pentagram websites (two more incredible Indian bands). The next day, he comes back to me with an ecstatic look on his face. "Dude, I loved it!" he cried. But then he tells me "But I'm sorry bro, the people who tune into FM Radios everyday won't like this stuff. This isn't marketable."

Which brings me to the main topic of this post. Why is it that Bollywood has such a massive monopoly over the Indian airwaves? What is it about Bollywood that makes the majority of Indian listeners such staunch fanatics who solemnly make a commitment never to hear any other genre again? Think about it, apart from a few Bhangra artists and some Pakistani rock bands, no other genre has broken into the mainstream. In fact, Bollywood is the mainstream.

It's not like there's no other good music in this country. Take the India's rock scene for example. Bands like TAAQ and Parikrama can cause mass hysteria internationally if given a chance. (In fact, TAAQ were once interviewed and their music played on America's National Public Radio once. Hours later, their website crashed due to excessive downloading from the US). They are already sort of like legends within India's cultist rock scene. They just need a break. Sadly, for most Indians, "rock" immediately conjures up an image of a long-haired freak bobbing his head up and down to something that sounds like two garbage cans crashing together. Come on guys, you don't have to grow your hair to listen to rock. That's only for the truly obsessed. You needn't go that far.

And it's not just rock. Take Indian classical music instead. Honestly, apart from the REALLY big names like Ravishankar and Zakir Hussain, how many classical artists have most Indians really heard of? Ever heard of someone called Pt. Kumar Mardhur? No? Well, I had the chance to listen to him at our college's annual music festival. When he sings, you get shivers up your spine. Yet, apart from a relatively small bunch of classical music fanatics, few people would have heard of him. Even established artists like L Subramanium and Vikku Vaidyanathan who deserve to have their concert tickets sold out in hours are relatively unheard of outside a certain community.

The most puzzling genre of all is Indian folk music. If you take a folk music piece, fuse it with a bollywood track and remix it a bit, you'll have nightclubs all over the country playing it until 3 in the morning. But try and persuade people to listen or dance to the same track in its original form, you'll get comments like "Oh, the remix was much better...why don't we play that?". Ask someone to dance a folk dance in its traditional form and you get loads of excuses. Ask them to dance the same dance to a bollywood track and you have people lining up to do it. Weird. Still, at least some of it is surviving in some form or the other.

The conclusion which I come to is that Indians in general are musically deprived and malnourished. They have this fixed mindset that only a certain genres are great and all the rest is not worth hearing. I havent even mentioned the REALLY exotic genres like celtic or african folk that are really worth hearing but there's no point in even writing about them. Indians really have to break out of this mindset. I'm not saying everything in Bollywood's bad, but then, everything in it isn't great either.