The divas and icons of “Hindi” pop music have gone silent.
Music is over for me.” Coming from Biddu, one of the pioneers of disco and Indipop, the statement is telling. The man who once sold millions of records across the world and produced and composed some sensational hits of the times, including Johnny Joker with Shweta Shetty and Made in India with Alisha Chinai, has come to terms with the fact that Indipop is dead. “Like a Hindi film with a novel storyline, talent in India is rare to find. Sure there are a lot of singers, but there is no Madonna, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber.” Bollywood is pop music now, says Biddu who currently lives in Spain and is working on a novel that will come out later this year.
The early ’90s were a defining period for the Chitrahaar generation. Music on television was no longer restricted to a biweekly programme on Doordarshan and importantly, it was now more than just Bollywood. Pop music had arrived and India finally had its own divas and icons taking up most of Channel V and MTV’s airtime. Indipop peaked with artistes like Shweta Shetty, Alisha Chinai, Anaida, Baba Sehgal, Lucky Ali, Mehnaz and Leslie Lewis, and bands such as Euphoria and Silk Route, only to fizzle out as dramatically. Some of its iconic figures have now moved on to playback singing or television. Many others have pretty much disappeared.
Most would say it was Bollywood that lured away some of the best voices like KK, Shaan, Daler Mehndi and Mohit Chauhan. But the film industry alone cannot be blamed for killing the independent pop music scene in India. Record labels were equally guilty. By the late ’90s, an album had come to mean huge money, so anyone and everyone wanted to become a pop star. Subir Malik, who managed the band Silk Route (of Dooba Dooba fame), says music companies started introducing a lot of mediocre stuff purely to make money. “There was a time when everyone wanted to be a pop star. I would get calls from people who ran restaurants in Lucknow and paan shops in Kanpur who were ready to put in insane amount of money to get their sons and daughters to become pop stars,” he recalls. The result was an overkill.
Market dynamics have also changed since the 1990s, says Malik, who also plays the keyboards for the rock band Parikrama and manages 53 other bands under the label Parikrama Inc. People are no longer buying CDs since everything is available online within days of an album’s launch, making it unviable to release an album, shoot videos for it and invest heavily in its packaging. The thrust now, he says, is on live gigs where a band can earn from Rs 30,000 to a lakh for a single concert.
Aryans, the band which shot to fame with the track Aaankhon mein tera hi chehra (its video saw Shahid Kapoor’s debut), has the same story to tell. Rahul Sehdev, Aryans’ band manager for six years, says the album Hai Dil, which was released in 2006, was available for download even before its official release. To survive, he says, there is no option but to turn to Bollywood and live concerts.
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As the pop phenomenon fizzled out, so did most of its stars. The ones who survived were those who constantly reinvented themselves. Leslie Lewis, known for his successful collaboration with Hariharan in their band Colonial Cousins, composed some of the most memorable melodies of the time, like Pari hoon main with Suneeta Rao and Pal with KK. He says people still recall the good music from that time. The artistes who were forgotten were anyway “bubblegum” pop. “While people still listen to Sa ni dha pa, the pop that was merely the flavour of the month naturally died.” Lewis says he was always conscious of reinventing himself — when pop peaked, he got into remixing (remember Rahul and I for Asha Bhonsale?) and now he is the music director for Coke Studio’s India debut. “For me, pop has been long over and I’m not going back to making albums,” he says.
Ironically, it appears that bands which were never part of the Indipop wave are the ones that have survived it. So, while girls may no longer sing Banoongi main Miss India, years after its release, Ma reva from Indian Ocean’s album Kandisa is still a favourite in the college circuit. The band recorded India’s first live album in 1997, but it was only after the success of its song Bandeh from the film Black Friday that it became hugely popular. “Bollywood,” says bass guitarist Rahul Ram, explaining the death of Indipop, “is a huge monster that eats up everything.”
Perhaps Ram is right. But then pop music — essentially a synthesis of various genres — is much like a fad. And now, with music channels more interested in promoting reality shows, there’s not much hope of an Indipop revival.