Music without boundaries

Last week, I attended a production called 100 Charmers. Director Roysten Abel had gathered five score saperas (snake charmers) from in and around Delhi to perform in an ensemble that was mostly music but presented with fine, dramatic flair. Set against the medieval Taramati Baradari on the outskirts of Hyderabad, the musicians lifted their beens to play an impressive repertoire.

This contained a few pieces that had me pondering the cross-currents of music, the interplay of different streams, and how riffs and even musical influences may travel from the grassroots of folk, up to the rarefied realms of the classical, and then be reinterpreted as accessible film music. Naturally, they performed Hemant Kumar’s interpretation of the sapera’s tune from Nagin (1954) — a reading so sublime and inevitable, it was in turn adopted by the snake charmer community as its anthem. The tune has stayed with India as the quintessential aural prompt for snakes. The musicians then played Kajrare from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s Bunty aur Babli and the hymn Amazing Grace. The saperas had reinvented themselves — and extended their survival. In rendering Kajrare with their plaintive, rustic strains, they also owned the song in a delightfully new way. Purists may purse their lips but surely such borrowings can only enrich a musical system.

Film music is not given sufficient credit for its role in channelling music that lies outside its ambit. If the general public has heard Bade Ghulam Ali Khan at all, it’s probably the snatch he sang for Mughal-e-Azam. Many heard of Ustad Rashid Khan for the first time because he sang Aaoge jab tum in Jab We Met. I attended a concert of his in Delhi a couple of years ago and not even his elaborate Kirwani elicited as many cheers as when he started on Aaoge… For a man feted by the world of classical music, he was absurdly pleased.

Film music has depicted folk tunes in innumerable instances. It has included Kabir, Tulsidas, Meera, Khusrau, Rahim and Bulle Shah. It has used folk narrative genres, too. I have a particular favourite from recent years. Punjabi folk has employed jugni, a peripatetic female narrator who observes the world and provides her commentary, for almost a century now. I was particularly pleased to hear it in Oye Lucky, Lucky Oye, Sneha Khanwalkar’s sharply authentic 2008 album.

It hasn’t all been one-way though. Classical music too has dipped from time to time into the lower orders or into parallel streams to pick up skeins that are now woven into their own fabric. Pandit Kumar Gandharva coopted folk renditions of Kabir into his own style of Nirguni bhajan and Carnatic music has taken the Marathi Varkari tradition of abhangs into its fold.

But, to my mind, there is one very certain level of success — when you trickle down to the lowest common denominator. As the snake charmers have reclaimed their tunes, so have others made some songs their own. Train singers favour a certain high-pitched type of song that allows them to be heard above the din of trains, and ones that fall into the chugging rhythm; Mela dilon ka… they like, and also, Pardesi, pardesi jaana nahin…

One other community has been revitalised these past years: wedding band players. Their repertoire used to comprise the decades-old Raja ki aayegi baraat and Mera yaar bana hai dulha. But now, thanks to Amit Trivedi’s Emosanal Atyachar, a song made for the trumpets of the baraat, the band is fashionable again. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the lively title song of Band Baja Baraat blaring out at the next wedding I attend. 

Those happy old New Years

The world stepped out to welcome the New Year last week while I sought refuge in my quilt, nursing a miserable cold over a glass of rasam. Even television — a friend on most occasions — let me down. Brittle hype was lined up on channel after channel, attempts at humour on one, spectacle on the other. It was so unsatisfactory I turned it off without waiting for the countdown to midnight and, perversely, went to sleep.

New Year's Eve, as TV channels conceive it, is the most manufactured of celebrations; similar ensembles are put together routinely for Holi, Diwali and other festivals but somehow work better than they do here. On the subject of New Year’s Eve, my mind runs no doubt out of sheer sentimentality, to the good old days. Those years in the 1980s and ’90s when Doordarshan, our one window to the world, kept us company in the hours leading to midnight.

I remember the comedian Jaspal Bhatti entertaining us; the short comedy skits that were, I’m now certain, only mildly funny. There was Gurdas Maan singing his trademark ‘Dil da mamla hai’, pausing playfully at ‘Dil…’ and all of us rushing in to prompt him. I remember Penaaz Masani, Falguni Pathak, Sharon Prabhakar, Javed Jaffrey and Usha Uthup. I cannot honestly say they sang or danced or performed better than anyone on the stage today — certainly, nostalgia plays a large part in giving that age its patina of being special.

That nostalgia isn’t restricted to the New Year’s Eve specials, it envelops the entire Doordarshan era. Bring it up and you’re essentially calling for a whole lot of people to wistfully remember their own favourites. Chitrahaar, someone will invariably say. Hum Log and Buniyaad will get a few mentions. Then the Sunday morning line-up, the Saturday afternoon specials, the weekend movies we waited all week for. There is something vivid about these recollections — it isn’t just about what they saw, it is about what they felt. Curiously, people talk often of staring at the colour bars before Doordarshan’s slowly spiralling logo came on the screen.

There is a sea change from our worlds then and now. Our minds and sensitivities were clean three decades ago — tabula rasas waiting to be imprinted on. We weren’t assaulted by images, sounds, media, opinions. We were able to focus on whatever we looked at, an attitude that seems almost zen in comparison to how we are now.

What does our fondness for the Doordarshan years mean? Does the advent of TV only bookmark a time when our impressions were at their freshest? Is it also due in part to the fact that TV viewing used to be so communal? In the early days, the entire neighbourhood would pour into the one home that housed the TV set. Later, even when every home acquired its own, we would gather to discuss what we watched. This collective experience is quite incommunicable to the spoilt-for-choice cable-&-satellite TV generation. It is impossible to convey to someone who wasn’t there what it meant. It was, quite simply, an age of innocence. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that we — all of India with access to TV sets — were on the same page, looking at exactly the same thing. DD’s much used placard that said ‘Rukavat ke liye khed hai’ signified an entire nation in limbo — sighing in frustration at a frame that might leap into animation any minute now. Never again will we know that kind of unity.

What India watched in 2010

Recently, YouTube came out with a year-end list of videos that India watched the most in 2010. There were no great surprises. The list affirmed what we knew: that Bollywood and cricket still rule the Indian heart and mind. If Live IPL, Tendulkar’s double century, Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ and ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ were the most searched phrases, among the most watched were Bollywood hits mostly from the previous year.

YouTube’s list by no means defines what our prime preoccupations were — I mean, no one searches for videos on inflation or moral corruption of the polity, after all. Nevertheless, within its confines, what makes the list and what doesn’t are both significant. The FIFA World Cup finds no high mention apart from Shakira, neither do any of the very special Indian victories and performances at the Commonwealth or the Asian Games. No scandalous sting operations either.

Still, it was a delicious opportunity to see what the masses — the people who make up those staggering numbers — were watching. To see what had drawn the most eyeballs and, perhaps, to understand why. At the very top, something unexpected: a video featuring Australian motivational speaker Nick Vujicic, a man born without limbs. The clip received more than 15 million hits on YouTube India. Clearly a viral, its popularity is not surprising given the inspirational, emotional content. However, what’s heartening is that there is no obvious ‘India’ link here. Insular as we are, if this many viewers watched this brave man speak, it brings hope that we can perhaps be global citizens after all.

But there ends our token interest in affairs outside the ‘des’. At number two, with over 4.5 million views, is the title song from Dil Bole Hadippa that has Shahid Kapoor and Rani Mukherjee keeping boisterous Bhangra beat. I enjoyed this number from 2009’s releases but wouldn’t have put it this high above other musical hits. The film was only a very average grosser, there were other songs that pleased audiences — from Delhi 6, for instance, or Kaminey or even ‘Emosanal Athyachar’ from Dev D… what made Hadippa zoom to the top? A look at the video explains it. It’s simply a wonderful combination of music, fluid choreography and star power: Rani Mukherjee shows off her shapely back and tops that with an amusing Sardar cameo. A look at the region-wise statistics for this video reveals an interesting bit of trivia — the video is most popular, not in India, but neighbouring Pakistan.

The presence of ‘Tere Liye’, a song from the Viveck Oberoi starrer Prince is a bit of a mystery. But note that it is sung by the soulful Atif Aslam, as is that other toplister ‘Tu Jaane Na’ from Ajab Prem ki Ghazab Kahani. Both movies were duds; there is nothing special about the way the songs were picturised. In fact, the top search yields for both songs aren’t even videos so much as montages to acco-mpany the song, so the inevitable conclusion must be drawn: India loves Atif Aslam.

‘Crazy Kiya Re’ is in this list, which is no surprise for Aishwarya Rai was in top form in Dhoom 2. There is also a steamy scene from Kurbaan with Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor. This one left me cold but, as they say profoundly, whatever…

But the inclusion that startled me most was a song from the 1984 film Andar Baahar with 3.9 million hits. I remembered this movie vaguely. It had Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in it and involved, I think, cops and robbers. It was not a significant hit then and there is no reason why it should suddenly resurface other than that Shemaroo Entertainment uploaded it in February 2009. True, Shroff and Moon Moon Sen are fairly uninhibited in the rain-dance sequence but we have seen better and worse, depending on your point of view. Then, why? A viral spread by subterranean forums perhaps? We shall never know.