Saturday, July 22, 2006

Muzikaaalllll Indiyaaaa.......

Have you ever noticed or rather keenly observed the musical scene in India? You tune in to any Indian radio frequency or any TV channel playing out Indian music and it is predominantly music from movies!!!!!! You might find a stray sprinkling of some pakistani group or an euphoria here and there, but not enough.

What is it about music and movies in our country? The whole gamut of musicians ( read that as the whole range of music directors, singers, guys who play instruments etc) are recognized by a complete nation only if they sing/ compose or do something for a movie.. And when I say a movie it cannot just be any movie... it has to be a complete recognizable”Apna Bollywood flick”

We have a great talent pool of music directors ranging from AR Rahman, Illayaraj Shankar Ehsaan Loy etc to the great RD Burman in the past. So what happened? Why have all their best been only for movies?Are our musicians guilty of not looking beyond the confines of a movie? I’m just curious to know in what way movies govern the musical talent of our country. Even if they do end up making individual music albums... they don’t last as long or to be put plainly they just don’t sell enough…

Take the case of someone like Bombay Jayshree, she is a classical singer and has been rendering great songs for ages but it took a ‘Zara Zara’ or a ‘Vaseegara’ for the whole country to sit up and take notice of her.Bismillah Khan is just fine, but ironically he would fade in popularity when compared to an Anu Mallik.

If you observe any other Non Asian country, the scene there is just the contrary... you have a lot of people churning out albums, the dependency on movies to make their music big is just not prevalent.

Now here is the catch, people in India are definitely buying Music albums by Shakira, Guns and roses etc,so again, its not that we do not appreciate music not linked to movies.

So do we appreciate our music makers more when they are in a filmi setting rather than an individualistic setting ?

Or .............
Do we need to relate to Indian music in particular in a more movie like setting?

Or..............
is it something about the visuals that attracts us more to music from movies? Does that explain why a Shakira CD would sell more than an Illayaraj or Rahman CD?

4 comments:

PizzaDude said...

From ages the main sourse of music in India has mainly been movies... so I think that is the reason for this trend... and maybe the music albums are not marketed properly to pull in a huge audience

Gargs said...

But as a nation if we have been exposed only to music from movies.. does it explain why we buy music by international singers which is definitely not inspired by movies...

PizzaDude said...

By default for most of Indians, Indian music -> bollywood movies.
There is no such association fro international music I guess... And what is the percentage of Indians who listen to international music.. very very less..

Gargs said...

No not just international music...
Im saying even if some indian musician like say rahman churned out some music album it wudnt sell as well as his music in a movie...