Songs with profanities have limited shelf-life: Singers and musicians

Things change over a period of time and Bollywood mirrors them well. Remember the way society revolted a decade and a half ago, when film-maker Shekhar Kapoor came out with a biopic on bandit queen Phoolan Devi, thanks to its abusive language.

Interestingly, 15 years later, voices of dissent are still there, but it seems dialogues and lyrics replete with profanity seem to have silenced them. It is something like beauty pagents, vehemently protested by society’s culture cops earlier. Today, they have been accepted, as they hardly get any attention.

There was a time when the unspoken was communicated through songs in Hindi movies. Thus born were some of the most memorable numbers which are permanently etched in our memory. Today, it’s a different story altogether. Included under the garb of ‘today’s language spoken by the youth’, are songs like DK Bose…, Chudail…, Dum Maaro Dum…. But do they have any shelf life?

“Minimal, not even a year,” says musician Shamir Tandon. “Personally, I am not fond of such language, neither do I approve of such language to popularise songs for short-term gains. As musicians, we must be responsible. We should be creating some kind of awareness through our songs,” he adds, citing examples of Kabir’s dohas. “Songs should highlight important subjects of society. Using profanity won’t do anything except getting immediate attention,” he says.

On quizzed about the excuse given that such songs are today’s language and liked by the youth, Shamir feels one should not underestimate the youth. “Today’s generation is very intelligent. They may take a note of it, but would certainly not relish them,” he feels.

Terming such songs as a clever marketing gimmick, Bollywood singer Raghav Sachar says they would never become classics. “In today’s busy world, something is needed to arrest your attention. Songs like these provide that shock treatment. One may or may not like it, but everybody takes a note of it. DK Bose... became the talk of the town though such songs have a life of one or two weeks,” he states. “I have nothing against them. Even DK Bose…, in my opinion, was packaged in a novel manner. It achieved the purpose it had in mind (of grabbing attention). It was done in a very indigenous and subtle manner and was very coy. It was not in our face, it was different,” he ends.