‘Aji hamari lafazi se kahin talvar nahi adti; hamare jhooton se markaz ki sarkar nahi girti’ (Neither can my loaded truth hold a sword; nor can my lies bring down the government of the day). Seemingly courteous yet drenched in angst, these lines, written by Rajshekhar, are from a song composed by Krsna that you probably wouldn’t have heard this year. It’s from a film called Cute Kameena, starring Kirti Kulhari who gained fame with Pink, which released in September this year. You probably wouldn’t have heard about the film either; it isn’t even listed on Wikipedia as a 2016 release. This quaint composition, titled ‘Yeh Shehar Mehboob Hai Ji’, and other nice sounding tracks from the album, were silenced by the noise of other chartbusters around, despite sporting two above-mentioned biggies on the credits with the success of the Tanu Weds Manu series behind them.
It’s just another instance of ‘good music falling through the cracks of hyperactive digital media’. Songs that are not marketed well might not end up on your playlist. There have been many such instances in the past, and Cute Kameena is not the only one this year. Salim-Sulaiman’s inspired, 11-songs strong, richly produced and rooted Jai Gangaajal, with an eclectic mix of veteran and new singers — from Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan and Sukhwinder Singh, to Arijit Singh and Pravesh Mallick and Amruta Fadnavis — is another largely overlooked album of the year.
There’s a flipside to it too. Another song that you probably would have heard but ignored is ‘Dama Dama Dam’ (Vishal Bhardwaj’s only song this year) from the film that didn’t make much noise, Madaari. Had the powers that be heard the lyrics, Irshad Kamil might have found himself in the same prison as Kanhaiya Kumar. The voice of dissent that roared up in parts of the country last year found a great channel in this Hindi film song, which takes a strong dig at communal politics, the impotency of a majority government, the Ambanis and Adanis, the ex-HR minister and the current Prime Minister.
With music albums becoming more of a marketing vehicle for the films, producers have been harnessing musicians for a certain kind of song that will help the film break out. They are becoming more and more intrusive in the way music is being composed. In an online chat show with film critic Anupama Chopra, composers Ehsaan Noorani, Amit Trivedi and Vishal-Shekhar confessed how there’s an incessant demand of a ‘hookline’ in a song. A ‘landing’ and a ‘hookline’ have visibly deformed the typical mukhda-antara structure. Take any dance number from this year; for example, ‘Baby Ko Bass Pasand Hai’ (Sultan) and ‘Kar Gayi Chull’ (Kapoor & Sons).
This year also marked the specific trend of recreating Punjabi pop or film songs from ’80s or ’90s: ‘Kala Chashma’ (Baar Baar Dekho), ‘Soch’ (Airlift), ‘Oye Oye’ (Azhar), ‘Kaate Nahi Kat-te’ (Force 2), ‘Aye Zindagi’ (Dear Zindagi), and many more. More than a lack of creativity, it is a result of lack of the producers’ faith in composers. Since these rejigs and curated albums made their presence felt, chances are that you might have paid little attention to sincere efforts by newer composers who delivered entire soundtracks quietly, like debutants Rohan and Vinayak’s Nil Battey Sannata, Vishal Khurana’s Neerja, Vipin Patwa’s Bollywood Diaries and Laal Rang with Mathias Duplessy. These are refreshing, unique voices to look forward to.
Two composers who debuted this year, Jasleen Royal (with two songs in Baar Baar Dekho — one co-sung by Prateek Kuhad — and one in Shivaay) and Clinton Cerejo (with three soundtracks: Jugni, Te3n and Kahaani 2), mark how mainstream Bollywood soundscape is widening itself to accommodate relatively indie sounds. Cerejo’s Punjabi folk fusion, Jugni, in which he brought his mentors Vishal Bhardwaj and A.R. Rahman to sing songs not composed by them for the first time, is the best debut album this year.
Other folk fusion albums this year include great efforts like Hitesh Sonik’s Parched, Tapas Relia’s Dhanak, Ashutosh Phatak’s Zubaan, and ‘Mandani Bolena’, a song by indie band Studio Fuzz and sung by Shubha Mudgal in the lesser known film M Cream. But it is Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s inventive Mirzya that walks away as not only the best folk fusion, but the best Hindi film album of the year.
The author is a freelance writer
