Bollywood pays no importance to music: Pankaj Udhas

Ghazal singer Pankaj Udhas, who has launched his single "Khwaabon ki Kahaani", says Bollywood isn't paying much importance to music and that seems to have brought its standard down.

"Bollywood pays no importance to music. The importance of music has become practically zero in Bollywood. The songs in movies are only there to promote the film. They are not an integral part of the movie or the script.

"Earlier, one used to listen to some good music and poetry because the songs used to be woven into the script and they used to be relevant to the script. Today, the songs in cinemas are not relevant to films. They have brought the standard of music to the pedestrian level and there is nothing that we can do about it," Udhas told IANS.

A widely popular singer, Udhas has sung songs like "Chitthi Aayee Hai" and "Jiye toh jiye kaise" in movies.

His latest single "Khwaabon ki Kahaani" was launched on hungama.com, an on-demand digital entertainment storefront, in the hope of reaching out to a larger audience and as an attempt to revive ghazals.

He says the lack of revenues in the music world is hampering the quality, however, there's hope due to the online platform.

"Most of the audio labels have absolutely no revenues out of any music which they produce unless it is produced by Bollywood, because Bollywood has the money to spend. Because of lack of revenue, there is no new stuff coming out.

"The only hope is a digital platform like Hungama which can take your music across to the world. So I'm really hoping that through digital sources we will bounce back," Udhas said.

Talking about his new single, the 64-year-old singer said he liked the ghazal since he first heard it from it's lyricist Aalok Shrivastav and recorded it within a week.

"What's exciting for me is that this is my first ghazal single. I've always done albums all my life. It was during the recording of a television serial title track which I was composing that Aalok Shrivastav narrated a ghazal that he had written. And I really liked the ghazal.

"I told him let's record it. Within a week's time, we recorded the ghazal and decided to make it a single. We tied up with Hungama so that we have a worldwide digital presence. We also shot a video for the song so we can connect with the younger audience and reach a larger audience," he added.