26 June,2011 07:57 AM IST | | Paromita Vohra
I discovered Coke Studio, the Pakistani fusion music show, thanks to my Pakistani friends. I watched and listened repeatedly, struck by how one musician highlighted the best in the other. This joining by finding points of confluence created a singular, hypnotic and hence transporting music that held both tradition and contemporanity.
Iillustration/ Jishu Dev Malakar
Over time, I lost some affection for the show, because I felt it had acquired the messianic air of Dracula's ball: the funereal lighting, ethnic robes and plump-lipped vampire's acolyte backup singers wearing "important-music-is-being-made-here-reverence-please" expressions. Some lightness has been lost to success. Nevertheless the music remained frequently fabulous, leading to pleasurable discoveries of artists, musical traditions, the history of a song. The affectations seemed minor before the purity of intent, seriousness of craft, artistic expansiveness and love --u00a0 things without which you can't really make something good, no matter how plentiful your other resources.
When I heard there was going to be an Indian Coke Studio, I was obviously excited. In a country bursting with diverse musical forms and talent, creating fabulous new renditions and fusion experiments would be child's play -- and maybe we'd inject some irreverence into it too.
But if there's one thing we can boast of, it's that we're real good at taking two good somethings and coming up with one good-for-nothing. The first episode of Coke Studio@MTV was a saddening display of conceptual poverty, a just-add-water remix of Bollywood singers with folk singers. Between the first two episodes, maybe one or two numbers, like Jiya Lage Na, were somewhat good, but it should be the other way round.
This is no purist's rant. All culture is remix, synthesising different strands through contemporary experience. Hindi film music has been our most talented remix industry, fusing bhangra, bihu, mando, ghazal, qawwali etc. with yodelling, sambas, waltzes, jazz and Western pop to create a popular musical culture with its own sound. But what is Coke Studio's sound? It reveals no musical plan. Too governed by a Bollywood paradigm, it neither unpacks the fusion of film songs to experience them anew, nor is there a discernible new sound, nor do the different musics find a unity.
This is partly indifferent music direction, but it's also the usual laziness constantly dumped on Indian audiences -- the response will be, 'this is not for you aficionado types', this is supposed to have "popular appeal", that usual excuse for mediocrity.
But Indians watch a lot of musical shows and seem perfectly capable of appreciating excellence and diversity. In the tryouts of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Little Champs, I found my hair unendingly on end at the virtuosity of those three little qawwali singing boys, the diminutive mata ki jagran pro, the soulful Himachali boy, with not one false note. These people honed their talents through local traditions and institutions, mostly religious, where music is the age-old path to love, compassion and God.
Where do such people go? They are usually eliminated from TV contests which are primarily for those with 'range,' meaning, suited for a Bollywood singing career of situational songs -- not those who are great at one thing, at rendering musics with deep roots.
Something like Coke Studio@MTV has the possibility of celebrating and showcasing these deep roots and building strong, new audiences for the kind of music which the commercial machinery presently gives little space to. It's everyone's loss if they don't grasp this opportunity with both hands to create things of beauty and put a little more love in the world.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevi.com.
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't necessarily represent those of the paper.
