Hindi film music has become naughtier, more honest: Sachin-Jigar

There was a time when Hindi film lyricists were shy about expressing certain words, sentiments and feelings, but the scenario is changing, say composer duo Sachin Sanghvi and Jigar Saraiya.

"Earlier, we (music composers and lyricists at large) couldn't say a few things in the songs because we were more shy then, or let's say we used to be rosy in a love song. Now we find that artificial," Sachin told IANS in an email interview from Mumbai.

"The Hindi (music) industry has learnt to become more honest and naughty. Both in song writing and lyrics, we have learnt to appreciate a more honest approach.

"As far as naughty, bada** songs are concerned, we are getting as naughty as we can be. It's cool and naughty, though sometimes we are on the edge. Let's hope we don't become vulgar," he added.

Having composed for films like "Go Goa Gone","Hero", "Badlapur" and "Finding Fanny", the duo have now created songs for the forthcoming entertainer "A Flying Jatt".

They feel that depth in songs is vanishing from Bollywood.

"We don't think we can now stay on one song or that one tune or that one melody for too long now. The depth seems to have eloped. So much entertainment is being churned out that we wonder how the listener picks one favourite with so much choice," Jigar told IANS.

Jigar, who has crooned numbers like "Mere Naal", "Piya Kesariyo", "Sorry Sorry" and "Gulabo", says rather than focussing on giving songs a recall value, Hindi music industry has started looking at something else.

"We have started looking for shock value or that immediate impact more than something that comes and makes an impact for lifetime length. Somehow we need to go deeper and more soulful and not go for only popcorn music that doesn't last more than the popcorn itself," he quipped.

With more and more platforms like Coke Studio, MTV Unplugged sprouting for folk artistes and independent musicians in India, Sachin says that it's time the Indian audience looks beyond an artistes' last Bollywood composition.

"More and more of independent space has started to find spotlight. It's time Indian audiences start to like an artiste for his personal work and not his last Bollywood best. Coke Studio certainly pioneers this space," Sachin said and added that the show is a winner as it is "folk redesigned".

Having said that, Jigar believes the music churned out by the Pakistani music industry, is purely soul-wrenching.

"Pakistani music is divided in two segments largely. One is very raw and folksy. That really works for us. That's just purely soul wrenching. The other side, though is pretty mediocre, because it apes Bollywood and that's not exciting at least in our opinion," he said.

One thing they feel that Indian music artistes need to learn from Pakistan is their appreciation of age-old poetry.

"What we can learn from Pakistani artistes is that they appreciate their original poetry, their Sufi concepts, their old poets, that 'shayrinuma ghazalnuma' depth is still there... People still enjoy it at a very layman level. Whereas here in India our ears are corrupt with either West or Bollywood," Sachin said.

"So if we can bring the best from our folk to the front, we can also be original and organic in our content," he added.

(Kishori Sud can be contacted at kishori.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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