a recent observation that must be jotted down. bollywood music has undergone several institutional changes over the time i've grown up. i (and many fellow men n women) do not remember relishing any of the songs generated in end-80s. some caught on to the anand-milind wagon but mostly the rehab took place with nadeem-shravan. lovely melodies rendered by sanu-paudwal pair (at least they used to sound like). jatin-lalit followed, anu malik made his presence felt once in awhile..and a few others till the ARR big-bang. n of course then SEL, n at least two unsung heroes: shandilya n chowta.
ARR brought in heavy arrangements characterisitic of west, mostly not compromising on melodies (lyrics devta to mazaar mein hi karvate badlenge). and others followed, each in their own ways. still, the discussions on pancham yahoogroups, occasional play of o-sajna (lata) or ye jeevan hai (kk) or well farrukh on radio4 do remind me of wot has been lost, never to return. so how do we decipher properties of music of 60's,70's or b4, which have been lost? where does the contemporary bolly stuff stand in respect to them? imo, contemporary can do little but rediscover the old. only the toolsets vary. one needs to love it hard.
hoho, i digressed. RDB had a flair for arrangements, unique percussional styles, sounds. much like shivmani. so, not going beyond percussions for the above comparison, lets c wot happened. when musicians in 60s 70s went beyond tabla n basic dholak, they mostly stuck to triples n loud snares. iso except RDB nobody seemed to experiment much and i guess his percussional expts made him deserve quite a lot of his accolades. 80's had him already established. (ah.the story of 80's remains to be written). laxmikant-pyarelal overthrew the likes of shankar-jaikishen n captured the bollywood territory right through 70s to 90s till when NS, AM etc came with fresh sounds. imo, this monopoly was cause of much musical downgrade right thru 80s till the final emancipation by arr etc. of course, their genious gave birth to amazing numbers (suno sajna papihe ne..etc) and yet it survived a lot on dholak, the bland foot-tapping mediocre percussion instrument. (alright my hate for LP's mediocrity makes me hate the instrument even more). dholak is deprived of bass of tabla and misc drums while its enthusiasm can run a whole big show on its own. a lot of despicable 80 numbers owed their crudeness to this instrument and LP for some reason overused it. (in fact, the whole aural ambience of ghai movies like ram lakhan reeks of dholak n improvisation around it, compare with yaadein or qsqt or dil hai ke maanta nahin). slowly with NS, and arr n of course misc classical-funk-hariharan,piyaBasanti,arr,remixes( yes i renamed classical-rock genre) contributions, dholak was shelved (or at least demoted) and more versatile instruments/arrangements took over. cello n piano provide superb basses. of course, overdone arrangements are the bane of our existence now.
i cud go on about the terrible bad influence of dholak on bollywood music but it can also be observed that it was more of a common man instrument, one with which the ordinary population cud easily identify. and so were the themes of such movies then. sophisticated percussions lend some quantity of grandeur to the theme, making them more posh, urbane or wotever u mite call them. again, perhaps this change has been possible becos of the increasing fascination of bollywood movies with urban culture (n then NRI culture). hoho, and now i guess that all above distaste for dholak mite have grown out of the my urban psyche.
and altho i'm not too much into being a fan of RDB, it appears to me that the contemporary percussions indeed have his musical lineage and if we had him, we cud have really mind-blowing contemporary bollywood music. (well, same cud be said abt KK or lata, but then musical composition abilities dont depreciate as fast as vocal)
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