Weekend

Friends, today in the weekend blog, I am writing on deterioration of Hindi film music over the years.

Senior citizens who were born in late 1940s and in 1950s can never forget the golden period of Hindi film music, this period is considered as best period among the Hindi film music, and it was at its peak during 1950s and 1960s. The music composer/director was considered as an important member of film’s unit and composer name was very prominent in film’s publicity along with Producer and Director. Even in the film’s title those days music composer’s name was generally 3^rd last, after the composer’s name the titles ended with names of Producer and Director. Prominent composer of 1950’s were Anil Biswas, SD Burman, Naushad, Shankar Jaikishan, C Ramchandra, Vasant Desai and OP Nayyar. Along with them others composers like Roshan, Ravi, Madan Mohan, Khayyam, Ravi, Kalyan Anandji were working very hard to establish their place in the industry. In 1960s some composer like Anil Biswas and Vasant Desai faded away and even C Ramchandra also started losing his place. There were two new entrant in this field in 1960s, and these composer were there till 1990s and they were Laxmikant Pyarelal and RD Burman, and there was one more compose who got established was Jaidev In my opinion 1960s was the best decade of Hindi film music and if I start to write down the films name and their composers the list will be endless, as each year we dad at least 10 to 15 films which had super hit music and average each film at 6 to 7 songs, so in this decade there were maximum super hit songs .

In the 1970s OP Nayyar, Naushad started losing their charm, and with the death of Jaikishan, although Shankar tried to maintain their name but it was not the same thing. Roshan had already expired in late 60s and music fraternity lost Madan Mohan and SD Burman also during this decade. RD Burman and Laxmikant Pyarelal ruled the field and new entrants who established their name were Rajesh  Roshan and Bappi Lahiri. As the subject of films were slowly changing from Romance and musical to action packed/angry young man theme, so during this decade music started losing its charm, as in action films there was hardly any scope for meaningful songs. In 1970s music started slowly losing its place, but still RD Burman, Laxmikant Pyarelal, Rajesh Roshan, Bappi Lahiri gave some super hit music

In the 80s the Hindi film music was at its lowest ebb, and each year the number of films who had good/super hit music started declining  and some of Hindi films produced in Sothern India even started having meaningless lyrics and very loud music. One can say by the time 1988 came people started losing interest in the music. But 2 films released in 1988 brought back the music in the front again, and music was the main reason for these 2 films for becoming super duper hits, and these  films were ‘Tezaab’ (music by Laxmikant Pyarelal) and ‘Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak’ (music by Anand Milind), now who can forget the song Ek Do Teen Char and dance of Maduri Dixit from Tezaab, and Papa Kehte Hain Bada Naam Karega and Aamir Khan’s innocence/youth; in these songs. These 2 songs were responsible for establishing the stardom of Madhuri & Aamir. One more music composer who was trying very hard in this decade was Anu Malik but to his dismay most of the films for which he composed music were flopping. In 1989 there was also one film which boosted the music and that film was ‘Maine Pyar kiya’ (music by Raam Laxman), all the songs of this film were super hit and it established the stardom of young Salman Khan.

In 1990 one film ‘Aashiqui’ took the nation by storm and its composer Nadeem Shravan established themselves, and they almost ruled the full decade. Another music composer who established himself during this decade was Anu Malik.In this decade RD Burman gave  his  swan song in ‘1942 A Love Story’ and before the release of the film he expired. During this decade Laxmikant also expired and without Laxmikant , Pyarelal stopped composing the film music. I think was the last decade where one could listen to good music throughout. In this decade one more composer who ruled was AR Rahman.

Coming to next millennium, the first few years of this decade, some of the films had a good music but after 2005/06 the standard of the music in  many films were not up to mark. I am mentioning the names of the films which won best music Filmfare award and from some films I can not even remember 2 songs. Guru (2007 – AR Rahman), Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na (2008- AR Rahman), Delhi 6 (2009-Ar Rahman).  One more trend started during this decade was that of using multiple composers for the music of the film.

Now coming to next decade Dabang (2010- Sajid Wajid, Lalit Pandit), Rock Star (2011- AR Rahman). Barfi (2012- Pritam), Aashiqui 2 (2013- Ankit, Mithun, Jeet), 2 States (2014-Shankar Ehsaan Loy), Roy (2015- Ankit, Meet bros,Anjaan, Amaal Malik), Ae Dil Hai Mushqil (2016- Pritam),Jagga Jasoos (2017- Pritam), Padmavat (2018- Sanjay Leela Bhansali) and in 2019 there were 2 films which shared this honour  Gully Boy (Ankit Tiwari , Zoya Akhtar)  &  Kabir Singh ( Mithun, Amaal Malik and Vishal Mishra).

With the above list, friend you will understand what I wanted to mention. In my opinion the root cause of deterioration is because now a days there are no music directors or composers, most of them are music arrangers. As any type of music played by any instrument is available on the internet, so the arranger’s job is how best he can mix different instrumental music and create a tune for the song. Gone are the days when music composer used to rehearse with singer and various musicians who played different musical instrument, then after that they used to for live recording of the song. In today’s world the music is first mixed and recorded and afterwards playback singer/s record their voice on different tracks, and thus the song is created.

Friends, I hope you must have enjoyed reading this article.

Awaiting for comments/views/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

6^th Mar 2020.