“One can steal everything from an artist except their talent.” - Marty Rubin
Copy-cats now dog almost all walks of life. It’s not just scripts, articles, lyrics but also music at large. The Indian music industry has been ‘influenced’ for ages by works of both western and eastern masterpieces and hitherto unheard tunes presented as original. While some just pick-up old works randomly and do a few cosmetic changes and present it as their own, some others try to rehash classics to bring in a creative difference to suit the current generation. The past decade has seen some pathetic recreation of hit melodies of the golden era, much to the chagrin of the connoisseurs like me, who can’t stand the ‘rejigging’ in the name of creative freedom.
This morning, I woke up to read the tweet of Oscar award winner and music maestro AR Rahman, where he seemed to vent his ire at the recreation of one of his masterpieces from Bollywood. Rahman posted the original Masakali song for people to listen and enjoy.
Seemed like a veiled dig at the recreators, however, ironically Rahman’s other masterpieces of the 1990s like the Urvashi-Urvashi or the Muqabla songs too have been remade with modern acoustic inputs, and the maestro surprisingly did not make much ‘noise’ about them.
The original from ‘Delhi 6’ was a melody akin to the 1960s – 70s Bollywood and has a charm of its own. The fun song takes you through the streets and throes of life in Delhi with a bubbly young girl prancing to it rhythmically. The Masakali 2.0 (I hate the way the terminology has evolved) is some voyeur’s delight, an abject lack of artistic sense.
While I am okay with the remix of the 90s numbers like Tu cheez badi hai mast mast or Tamma Tamma loge, I can’t accept the evergreen classics like Gulabi aankhen jo teri dekhi or Saara zamaana haseeno ka deewana or Jaata kahaan hai deewaane and dozens of hits of the golden era remixed, added with “jhankar” beats and synchronised with modern electronic musical sounds. They are plain murder. But then most modern plagiarists opine that good music of heydays needs to brought to the current generation with a pepped-up version. I don’t agree - Classic works of art like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Monalisa are to be admired as the original and should not be recreated.
Purists like me detest the abject recreation of good retro music. The poverty of ideas see a new low, and the plagiarists are having a field day. Somewhere an RD Burman or a Kishore Kumar might be rolling in the grave.
Hope AR Rahman’s protest yields results, well… I doubt!
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Pics: Internet
