The year is 1979. A fresh-in-love couple exchanges shy glances and sings about living in the moment to legendary music director R D Burman’s melodious tunes. The film is Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s comic classic Golmaal; the lovers in question are Amol Palekar and Bindiya Goswami. Cut to circa 2005. Hip in bling, Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra are crooning Right Here Right Now to the hip-hop beats of Vishal-Shekhar in Rohan Sippy’s Bluffmaster. The situation is much the same but the music couldn’t be more different.

From India’s first full-length 1931 sound film, Alam Ara to Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om, music has always been a major attraction in Hindi cinema. Today Bollywood is dancing to new tunes that complement kitsch lyrics, racy beats and a cool-dude attitude. In a bid to catch Generation X’s ear, music has gone global and opened its doors to diverse world and Indian influences. It is now an eclectic mix of reggae, hip hop, lounge, rock, Sufi and folk music. With so many diverse new influences, there is no distinctly filmi sound anymore. Music director Shekhar Ravjiani of Vishal-Shekhar fame attributes the trend to the increasing exchange of ideas between Indian and international composers. “Just as foreign artists are using a lot of Indian instruments, we are using their kind of arrangement. We are learning from each other.”

A new breed of music directors – Pritam, Mithoon, Vishal-Shekhar, Shankar-Ehsaan Loy and Shantanu Moitra, Aadesh Shrivastava – who grew up listening to R D Burman, are now infusing varied sounds in a bid to offer something new to listeners. Mithoon puts the trend in historical perspective, “Since film music began in 1930s, it has constantly evolved. People are always looking out for change. If I’ve grown up listening to some genres, I would not like to use something similar in my music, I would want to create different compositions.”
Many insiders don’t view this phase with much surprise. Singer Shaan, who has been the playback voice of virtually every hero in the last few years, feels Indian film music has always represented the latest global trends. “The 60s were synonymous with rock ’n’ roll, the 80s, when pop was making waves all across the world, were synonymous with Bappida’s pop music. Today if the mainstream Hindi film music is drawing on hip hop or reggae, it’s because these are the flavours of the world.”

Another important factor that has helped the globalisation of Bollywood music is the infusion of English, Persian and Punjabi words into Hindi lyrics. Words like ‘my love’, ‘darling’, ‘it’s rocking’, ‘where’s the party tonight’, ‘it’s the time to disco’, ‘mauja-mauja’, ‘maula’ have now found their way in filmi music. “I think today we can introduce any kind of genre in Hindi movies, just by changing the orchestration. Earlier we were lyrically bound; mostly Hindi and Urdu phrases were used. But of late, a lot of English, Punjabi and Farsi words are being used,” says Pritam whose latest creation Mauja Mauja from Jab We Met is creating a buzz.

Composer, lyricist and singer Vishal Dadlani opines that cinema and its music reflect the times we live in. So the lyrics have been updated to the way the urban Indian youth communicates, which is usually Hindi interlaced with a lot of English words. “But when the scene demands emotional, content-driven lyrics, we go back to the traditional form and use Urdu words,” he adds. Speaking at a broader level, the growing NRI audience for Bollywood films and the emergence of small-budget, multiplex cinema, have also encouraged and enabled directors to experiment with different genres.

Music directors like Pritam and Mithoon are delving into their formative influences to create the kind of music that they like to listen to. A die-hard rock fan (he was a member of a rock band in college), Pritam introduced rock ballads in Anurag Basu’s hit Life in a Metro. Rock is a generic term for the range of styles that evolved out of rock ’n’ roll. It’s a musical style that arose in the U.S. in the mid-1950s blend of black rhythm-and-blues with white country-and-western. An avid lover of the electric sitar –which gives the tone of a guitar but the Indian note of a sitar – and the flute, Pritam used the guitar and live drums extensively to give the film’s songs a typical rock sound and feel. “Metro had exactly the same kind of music that I like. The movie’s basic theme was city blues, which I had to portray through music. The songs were like ballads but I infused the rock essence just to give it a whole new fresh sound. Usage of English words, orchestration and new voices made the songs novel.”

Chartbusters like Alvida, In Dinon, Oh Meri Jaan were perfect examples of rock ballads. Apart from this, he has also experimented with diverse instruments and dabbled with different sounds in his other projects. Pritam introduced elements of Latin music in Dhoom, his first big hit. He used a lot of nylon string guitar, better known as flamenco, in Salaam-e (Dhoom) as well as Touch me (Dhoom 2). Apart from this, songs like Baila baila (Khwaish), Sholon Si (Shabd) had strong guitar-violin accompaniments and distinct salsa beats. Salsa is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean rhythm that is popular in many Latino countries. “For the title track of Dhoom 2, I was inspired by Brazilian percussion. We used a live percussion ensemble of some trash cans with oil cans, empty biscuit cans and ashtrays!”

The talented composer considers Metro and Dhoom 2 close to his heart. “I experimented with varied genres in Dhoom 2, especially with Crazy Kiya Re and Dhoom Again.” An ardent admirer of R D Burman and an avid fan of western and Indian classical music, blues and rock, Pritam is now exploring folk and earthy tunes in Vivek Agnihotri’s Goal.