Melody merchants of Bollywood

If Hindi film songs today sound very different from the way they used to, say, a couple of decades ago, it is because in Bollywood, music is no longer composed — it is assembled from ‘tune banks’.

Ask anybody what has changed in Bollywood music from the days of RD Burman and the reply is always, “the way it sounds.” But pose the same question to a musician from the industry and they all give the same startling answer: “music is not composed anymore, it is assembled.” That is the reason, they say, Hindi film music sounds different today as compared with, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

One film, one composer
If you take the eighties, for instance, there was a film, and the film had a designated music composer. This composer would hear the script, listen to the ‘situations’ for the songs, have sessions with the lyricists, and eventually come up with about ten tracks for the film. Well, this doesn’t happen not any more.

Today, the music composer, at any given time, is ready with a ‘bank’ of tunes in his computer. In most cases, it is the producer (not the director, mind you) who meets the composer, and explains to him what kind of film he is making. He then hands him a list, which could be something like: two racy numbers, two romantic numbers, one item number, and one number for the music video.

The composer then quickly dives into his ‘bank,’ picks the appropriate set of tunes, and sends them to the filmmaker on email. The process of sending tunes back and forth continues till the filmmakers are satisfied with the songs, which then goes into production.

One fall-out of this new system has been that filmmakers do not trust any one music composer with the film. Says Bollywood’s leading music composer, Pritam Chakraborty, “The requests that I usually get is for only one or two tunes per film. Sometimes I’m told to just give an item number and that’s it. I send them some tunes from my bank and ask them for an approval. The process goes on till the song is selected. Besides, I am not aware who is composing the other songs, and am supposed to concentrate only on my own track. So, I’m only bothered about how my track will fare on the charts. There’s no ownership of the music of the film.” Of course, the multiple musical visions and styles at work could also mean that they may not all gel well to produce a singular musical feel for the film.

Music maestro AR Rahman also admits that he no longer deals with films, only with tunes. “I have a tune bank but I wouldn’t like to believe that it is the best in the world. I compose music and there are a few tracks that are already composed and ready with me. When a film producer approaches me, I send them the samples.

The filmmakers select the tracks. I just wait for their approval before recording the song,” Rahman had said earlier, confirming the trend.

Comparatively, he admits to have been having a greater involvement with 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s latest, which has Rahman in the running for another Oscar. “I have seen 127 Hours forty times,” he admits, adding that the trick is to cut down on assignments, so each film gets appropriate attention. “When you take too much work it gets too stressful for you. You then start compromising. I had taken too much on my plate and was also travelling too much. I will not compromise on my creativity any more,” he says.

When 'Jai Ho got' rejected
Such an approach can lead to strange incidents. Take the case of the 'Jai Ho' track that fetched AR Rahman an Oscar. Rehman first offered this track to Subhash Ghai for his film Yuvvraj. Ghai, believe it or not, rejected it. The ‘reject’ then went to Danny Boyle and became the Academy Award-winning central theme of Slumdog Millionaire.

The evergreen Bappi Lahiri has his own inimitable take on the new order of things in Bollywood. “Yeh toh bhaai instant cheezo ka zaamana hai. Instant gaana, instant love, instant hit. Nobody has the time to wait for a track to be composed. Agar aap ko paas gaana hai to humko dedo. Nahin to yaahan se phuto (These days it’s the time for instant things. If you have the songs, give it to us right away, otherwise buzz off),” he says.

Lahiri admits that the good old days when a gaana was composed over days and days of deliberations, the process of creation rendered sweeter and more exciting by unending pegs of whisky and fights with the director, respectively, are long gone. 

“Now it’s all about racy numbers. It doesn’t matter what the lyrics are but the sounds have to be a sure-shot, instant hit. If you can’t guarantee that, then the filmmakers are not willing to talk to you,” he says.

Gulzar, who many consider an exception in an age where lyrics and poetry have very little to do with each other, surprisingly enough, defends the new trend. “The songs are a reflection of what people want to hear,” he had said earlier. “The lyrics are of course, made-to-order. But I wouldn’t say the way the lyrics and the music have changed over the years is bad. Everything goes through a change. If it is not good, then it will be rejected over the years.”

However, what Gulzar forgot to add was that these days lyrics are not written. They are ‘fitted’ into a track.

Composers turn to TV
But the changes have had their impact on music composers. The drop in the quantum of work, and therefore, money, coming their way has now forced them to look elsewhere for sustenance: reality shows on TV.

“What else would anybody do? I have a wife and three children to support,” says composer Ismail Durbar, who has been a judge on numerous reality shows. “I can’t afford to wait forever for a filmmaker to come to me for just one track and then wait for months for another. There are times when a director or a producer rejects 10 tracks before finally selecting one. Reality shows are a far easier option to earn your daily bread,” he adds.

Another byproduct of this change is the rise of a new breed of music directors who seem to specialise in composing the ‘in-between’ stretches of a song, over and above the work done by the music director, or rather, the track composer.

One such in-between composer is New York-based Jai Kumar Menon, more popularly known as Stylebhai. “I compose the rap part in a song. I add a certain peppiness to the song, which gives it the necessary push in the charts,” he says. “I also take the most important number of a film track and generate its remix version.”

Apart from numerous compositions in the past, Menon has composed the “in between’ chorus of the track ‘Twist’ in Love Aaj Kal and also the rap/reggae vocals of the track 'Baa Mulaiza' in De Dana Dhan.

While the change in approach to song-making seems to have worked - going by the higher number of hits generated every year (200 in 2009), the assembly-line manufacturing has also meant that the music spends a much shorter time at the top of the charts, and not too many of them look likely to become classics, like the evergreen hits of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.