The new sounds of music

The Indian film industry is experimenting with newer, fresher and more unconventional singers and music directors.

Pakistani singer Shafqat Amanat Ali is almost ready with his next album. Hectic preparations are underway for the album's first video that will mark the second coming of his band Fuzon in India.

The group first became popular when it entered the Indian music industry in 2002 with the album Saagar, the title track of which was even featured in Nagesh Kukunoor's film Hyderabad Blues II.

Music shows, studio recordings and riyaaz apart, Ali is straining his vocal chords to answer the incessant phone calls that success has brought in his wake as playback singer for the Hindi film industry.

Fresh from the success of "Mitwa", a song featured in Karan Johar's forthcoming Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, written by Javed Akhtar and composed by music directors Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, this track, "a dark horse", as Ehsaan defines it, has been sung by Ali and is slowly climbing the countdown charts to tremendous popularity.

There was a time when Pakistani bands were belting the newest melodies in the Indian non-film music market. Today, many of them have graduated to playback singing for commercial Indian films.

Why just Pakistani bands, the soundwaves now include a growing number of Indi-pop singers, rock bands and musicians who had otherwise restricted themselves to the non-film market.

Is the Indian film industry listening to a new tune? Is the music mart discovering a new sound? Are music directors finally beginning to experiment with fresh voices? Are listeners tuning in? Strain your ears, plug in the headphones and in all probability the answer just might be a resounding yes.

Think about it. In the film Corporate, music director Shamir Tandon, also country head, Virgin EMI, has used the very unconventional voice of Gary Lawyer for the film's title track.

Meanwhile Rabbi Shergill, the singer who stole our hearts with "Bulla", is now turning music director with the film Delhii Heights, starring Neha Dhupia and Jimmi Shergill.

Then there's Zubeen Garg, an Assam lad who has nearly 7,000 regional songs to his credit and whose latest hit "Ya Ali" from the film Gangster helped HMV Saregama sell nearly 38,000 CDs and cassettes in Assam alone within the first few weeks of its release. Interestingly, Garg now turns independent music director with the film Strings.

"It's a fresh wave, one hundred per cent," feels Ali, speaking to us from Pakistan. He feels that the Indian film music notes in the late '80s and early '90s were boring, with little or no experimentation. Ali has been asked to compose music for a film and in all probability he will be singing for Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy again.

"I can't imagine singing a song like "Mitwa" in the 1980s, it's only today that audiences have matured and musicians are willing to compose tracks keeping fresher voices in mind."

Ehsaan would agree. "When we started composing "Mitwa", we knew we were looking for a value-addition proposition and Shafqat certainly lent his across-the-border charm to the song.

Imagine," he says, "if we'd got a regular playback singer to sing this track? It would never have sounded as good." He adds: "Come to think of it, even we've graduated from being a part of numerous music bands, and somewhere it reflects in our music and the choice of singers for our songs. Maybe that's why we sound fresh."

Why is it becoming imperative for music directors to introduce newer voices into the numerous recording studios in a bid to enhance the overall sound of the Indian film industry? Why is the face of music changing today? Tandon quickly replies: "Simple "" because the films too are changing."

In his view, with the visual element in films changing, it is imminent that the music changes too. "When I composed music for Madhur Bhandarkar's Page 3, it was a different cinema altogether.

In Corporate too, Lawyer's voice and texture was best suited because we've used a lot of terminology related to the corporate world. I can't imagine any mainstream playback singer pronouncing the English words used in the song correctly," he says.

Singer Rabbi, who is ready with his first work as an independent music director, feels it was the artistic freedom that prompted him to sign on the dotted line to compose music for Delhii Heights.

"It's also challenging," he says, "when I compose tracks for myself, I don't limit myself, I have a wide canvas to flaunt my sound; for a film, the director and script takes over and I have to step back to an extent."

Though he feels that pop music in the industry is making its presence felt, he's cautious not to call it "a quantum leaps of sorts".

But he agrees that the market today is diverse like it never was before, and since there are just a select number of singers in the playback industry (which in turn can get monotonous), music directors aren't shying away from bringing in newer singers and artistes from the Indi-pop scene.

"It's even more crucial to sustain this novelty factor in the industry," he says. Pakistani singer Ali Zafar, who has been offered six Bollywood films, besides an English film and a British production, says, "Like any other art form, it's important to constantly reinvent music. It also needs to be done with intelligence."

Zafar sites the example of "Ya Ali," an Arabic track originally that, according to Zafar, "has been adapted intelligently to suit Indian audiences".

He adds, "No rocker would put "Mitwa" in the rock genre, like some people tend to do. It's been done tastefully by the music directors and the singer and it has also worked because of how Karan Johar has presented it on screen."

Tandon objects: "Lifting international tracks, giving them an Indian touch and then calling it intelligent is just no excuse." The other option, he says, is to double up as music consultants "" a relatively new word in the music lingo.

He explains, "Vishal-Shekhar actually have just one song in Bluffmaster. For the other songs, we approached the original artistes, gave them money and then got their songs incorporated in the film," says Tandon.

Ehsaan agrees, "The music industry is going through a change, we will experiment with fresh voices in the future. But yes, it's crucial for us to be original."

While it might take some time for originality to find place inthe film music scenario, for now listeners and musicians seem to be giving a thumbs up to its new sound.