As a music loving man of the modern era I find myself more afflicted with the modern tone, style and way of music being composed but somewhere I miss the purity and organic vibe in the midst of the technicality and aggression or too much of electronic bass drops.
So in the recent wake of lockdown when I re-discovered my love for older songs from my parent’s and grandparent’s era I found that how much pure music used to be back then. Be it the acid tripping hippie-psychedelic era of 60’s, The loud and noisy rock n’ roll era of 70’s, The power chord packed heavy metal and hard rock era of 80’s, and punk induced pop music of 90’s or the boyband and diva era of the early 2000’s, back than music carried a style and a substantial value.
The 60’s rock musicians like Jennies Joplin, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jim
Morisson, Credence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presly had made such an impact that it went on to be followed by our Hindi film and Assamese music industry, because that was the time when musicians in India were experimenting with electric guitars, bass, drums, keyboards and distorted or gruff vocals in Bollywood, if you remember the songs from Sholay or any rocking and foot tapping numbers by Kishore Kumar, that was influenced by the psychedelic scene or the hippie rock scene itself and Kishore Kumar was indeed the Elvis Presley of Bollywood, who was a legend in his own rights and a man with a golden voice. The 60’s rock music had also had a major influence on Sir Jayanta Hazarika who was heavily influenced by John Lennon, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
Towards the 70’s however, music took yet another wild direction when rock n’ roll just got a little heavier. If in the 60’s musicians like Jimi Hendrix or Steppenwolf had set the blueprint for heavier form of rock n’ roll, later bands in the 70’s like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath had just cranked it up even more with distorted guitars, louder amps and darker themes in the lyrics and towards the late 70’s true heavy metal was invented. But towards the end of 70’s rock n’ roll got afflicted with what they used to call as disco rock that was first seen over songs like, “radio gaga” or “I want to break free” by Queen or the pre-gypsy era by groups like Abba or Bonny M, something that influenced the style and fashion and music of 70’s in Bollywood film Industry, when “disco”, belly button and hippie cut hairstyle was becoming a trend. That’s the year when Bollywood made people break a leg and burn the dance floor.
In the 80’s, music was in abundance because the west was becoming a land of opportunity and there was no scarcity of genres. It was not about one genre anymore but the various subgenres itself. In the 80’s every kid wanted to be in a freaking rock band because it was the time when rock n’ roll was becoming an anthem of rebellion and revolution. And many people might not know but few of the 80’s bands like Europe and Bon Jovi actually had influenced some music in our Bollywood industry, an excerpt of violin in the song, “Mere sawalo ka jawab do” was influenced by music from Europe and the brilliant composer Kumar Sanu was influenced by the 80’s western music. 80’s was also the same year when the world discovered the King of Pop Michael Jackson and his music have had a greater impact over every musicians till this decade. He was the master of style and substantial composition and there is no denial over it.
Then again in the 90’s we got grunge, the true anthem of angst and rebellion, many people
might say that grunge killed metal or music as a whole but if it wasn’t for people like Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder music in the East might not have got the direction it was looking for. And 90’s was the same era when pop music was revamped with boyband/girlband trend by bands like N-Sync, Boyzone, Westlife, Blue, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child and solo artists like Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears and Enrique or Bryan Adams to such extant that towards the end of 99 India got its own pop group like Viva fronted by Anushka Manchanda and Band Of Boys fronted by the actor Sudhanshu Pandey and this was the time when modern Assamese music was becoming a Revolution when Zubeen Garg released his debut album Anamika, a firstever Assamese album to have blues and rock influence and gave us singers like Jitul Sonowal who brought the influence of Jazz over Assamese music.
But one of the most known era and the best in my opinion would be the early 2000’s when
music was last being legit. That’s the time when world got genres like Nu-Metal, groove metal, pop rock, trance, House, hip hop, rap, metalcore, hardcore you name it. And even the mainstream music in India was in its best form. The same was the year when India was doing a lot of collaboration with Pakistani musicians like Jal The band, Atif Aslam, Junoon, Call, Strings and the likes in then movies and that was the era when India produced musicians like Aryans, a band that I miss till this date.
But towards the end of 2012, music became just way too clichéd, and sometimes we just feel that the current music that are coming out either lacks originality, substance, themes, message, purity and an identity and feel like as if musicians are doing it just for that sake of doing it. In this rising competition of technical expertise of fast paced shredding in rock or metal, I sometime miss the feels and emotions of songs like “imagine” by John Lennon, likewise in the wake of dropping the sickest or dopiest bass drop or a rap flow in a rap influenced Hindi song, I miss the simplicity of songs like, “humei tumse pyaar kitna” by Kishore Kumar.
I once heard Zubeen Da saying that, “I don’t like Bollywood, they lacks originality, since like last five years we ain’t hearing anything new and are relying on recycling the old songs with new tune and are just butchering a song with rap music, so I don’t want to waste my time with an industry that is on a midlife crisis, I make music that I like.”
Somewhere I actually felt the gravity of it and actually realized where our industry is heading now, but I won’t say that we lack good music, we still have good singers and composers but that substantial backdrop and simplicity is long gone and nowhere to be found.
Comentarios