How remix culture is killing music

The recent Falguni Pathak-Neha Kakkar row over the latter recreating the former’s track ‘Maine payal hai chhankai’ is symptomatic of the degeneration in our collective tastes for cinematic art and aesthetics. This was bound to happen because nowadays, every ‘new’ number or even a movie, is a remix or remake, signalling a serious drought of originality.

Music has always played a vital role in Indian cinema. Earlier, the songs in a movie used to be dove-tailed to the story, thus creating a seamless and mellifluous effect. But film music has gone down drastically in the last three decades. So much so that there are ‘tasteless’ item numbers and album songs masqueraded as film songs. One song is being repeated many times by many singers but the quality has remained poor. This shows the rank impoverished state of music, which is nothing but cacophony created by mediocre singers, producers and music companies.

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But what led to the trend of remix songs? When music becomes a business, the aesthetics suffer. Popular music began to go down the spiral when the industry lost the great Rafi and legendary poet-lyricist Sahir Ludhianavi in quick succession in 1980, followed by Kishore Kumar in 1987. Mukesh had already left the world in 1976.

This created a huge void and that’s the reason, the entire decade of 80s witnessed Bappi Lahiri brand of music, which was loud and bizarre. This strongly influenced the masses. Then came a businessman and T-Series baron in the early 90s, who introduced raw fresh singers like the young Sonu Nigam and Anuradha Paudwal, though she was already somewhat ‘established.’ They chose to sing Rafi and Lata’s cover versions and their rendering impressed people. For better or worse, you decide.

Enthused by the grand success of cover versions, a whole crop of singers and performers like Shefali Jariwala (better known as ‘Kaanta laga’ girl) and more popularised the remix culture and the Hindi music video production in the 1990s and early millennium.

The pliable copyright act and various loopholes in the plagiarism section were also exploited by the industry. Music companies and producers saw the wave as a great opportunity to do great business. On the other hand, music lovers and critics from the previous generations felt the sanctity of music suffered because of this practice. The younger generation got hooked on to a different style of music. They perhaps cannot distinguish the nuances of a Rafi number and constructively argue how its superior than works of current generation’s stalwarts.

One hopes there is some kind of regulation to curb this practice of remixing to preserve the essence of several cult-classic original songs. Music lovers of today must make efforts to revisit and listen to yesteryear hits to develop more perspectives on music. Writers of today must strive to create original numbers and not rely on refurbishing the old hits. Listeners must demand quality music and not ignore the value of aesthetics.