Muzak attack

HIGH NOTES

And so it is that we find ourselves in an era defined by a lack of music morality. Drastic and vague as that may sound, I've had to come to this conclusion after weeks of finding myself growing super sensitive to the staggering amount of Indian film, pop and remix music that's holding much of our country (and nearly as many people outside of it) firmly by the ear.

And while I really have no problem with octogenarian aunties gyrating to "Kajara re", the unabashed ferocity with which commercial Indian repertoire is being hurled at me is driving me to extremes that I never knew possible.

Last week I was forced to turn down a rickshaw driver because I heard traces of the initial notes of "Dus bahane" beckoning me from the rickshaw's interiors.

A few minutes later in the confines of an audio-deprived rickshaw (a species that's dying quickly) I tried to recall times when I was forced to change plans or directly turn them down because of the musical fare dished out at the suggested places. Surprisingly, I ran out of fingers to count on.

All this was new to me, as I, who had so long lived with international music and never really given a rat's tail about local repertoire, suddenly found myself at threat from a force more powerful than I had ever deemed.

I was mortified. Was I an anglophile? Would I run away every time anyone turned on a local radio station that played popular Hindi tunes? And what would happen when all the new radio stations started doing the same thing? Would I survive it? Was I, the ever music-impassioned soul and lover of all art forms musical, suddenly a complete mess of desi-phobic entanglements?

Well, I've thought about it, and to put it straight "" I am none of the above. As far as I know, there's good music and there's commercial music. If you are lucky you'll get the two in one.

A R Rahman's song "Roobaroo" is a good example of this. It's commercial and overplayed but that doesn't stop it from being a great song. Himesh Reshammiya is a runaway success and even though he's not exactly my type of artiste I can see why people choose to love his music as much as they do. I give the same treatment to DJ Suketu's remixes. But the Bluffmaster OST is probably the best example of how commercialism meets music quality in a groundbreaking way, and I absolutely love it.

But what's really killing me is the mediocre, low-quality, rehashed trash that seems to be made purely to popularise a film or serve as a shoddy excuse for pop sensationalism. And the saddest part is that this is exactly what the Indian public wants. The more we feed this depraved fetish, the more it grows.

Commercialism has seeped into our art and taken root in the soul of our musical heritage. It seems to threaten the few great artistes that we have today and losing them to the mindless snare of economic gain will prove our artistic downfall.

But I wonder when and if music directors, artistes and record labels will realise that they are on the verge of destroying a rich musical heritage and building a monolith to music that bears no consequence at all and holds no trace of artistic integrity, let alone genius. If their goal is to keep churning out music for wannabe actresses and urban club goers to dance to, we have good reason to fear.

I'm sure that there's heaps of good Indian film and popular music that I am not paying enough attention to, but who would when commercial nonsense is being chucked at you by the truckload. It's exactly this that makes me run for cover with the CD from the new Brit sensations, the Arctic Monkeys.