naa paaTa nee nOTa nalagaala silakaa by Darina poye daanayya

Mohd. Rafi had a sweet voice. Nobody would refute that fact. Mohd. Rafi had a great knack to twist and turn his voice according to the situation and bring out a sound that was right on the target and quite apt to the happenings on the screen. Mohd. Rafi was indeed a great singer. Now, Stop! Play his "baar baar dekho hazaar baar dekho" song from "China Town" and proceed till the end of the melody. Stop! Change the cassette/CD to "bhalae tammuDu". And listen to the same melody, this time in telugu "enta vaaru gaani, vaedaantulaina gaani". As Kota Srinivasa Rao's character in "Money" laments, "this time, songs same, singers same, but LANGUAGE CHANGED. 2 weeks [shakes his head], 2 days happy, then started struggle, why?" Mohd. Rafi was the same. The great sweetness, the tender emotions, the slight lift and the heavy bass - all the characteristics that defined his singing essentially remained constant. Enter the "language" variable to mess the whole experience up. The experience is similar to scratching a long nail against a clear black board. Or take a sharp stainless object (like a spoon or a fork) and scratch it against another flat stainless object. The experience cannot be put into words. Enough to say that the listener would rather have hot wax poured into his ear than take a few seconds of that sound. And it is the great Mohd. Rafi that is the point in discussion.

The terms variety and different are the most misused terms in the industry. "Why do you have a movie, with a Hindi heroine, and Malayalam one, 2 Kannada villans, scored by a Tamilian, directed by another Tamilian, with Pakistani singers hogging the credits for playbacks and with some Hindi ones thrown in the mix, MADE IN TELUGU?". Expect a broad grin from the producer and bet on it that he is certain to throw the term "variety" at least a couple of times in the reply. The term which, once upon a good old time, stood for presentation of a nice piece of what had never before seen/heard on the screen and brought a pleasing and a different feeling, is now representative of just a different feeling. A different feeling that is impossible to put a finger on, leave alone trying to explain it. And the effect is much more pronounced in the music industry. One can follow till the point of "chaarumathi, I love you... chandramukhi, I love you" from the latest movie Anand. And the words following those two statements seemed to be drowned in a collaborative mess of an Indian born England settled Hindi pop singer and Tamil born Hyderabad settled classical trained music director. Imagine the poet's plight listening to the album, being hailed as radically "different" from the rest, when he himself could not make out what in the God's world Lucky Ali is yelling about!

Now, let's start the blame game here. Who would, in all his sane mind, sit down and think - "Now here is a beautiful lyric that has been handed down to me by that great writer. Now, how do I go about to treat it? Do I have a Pakistani singer at my disposal whose latest cacophony was an instant chartbuster? Or can I rope in that Tamil singer who does a horrendous job of mispronouncing words leaving out all the stress syllables? Or why don't I bring aboard that 15 year old Hindi singer who has been making waves all over and prove to the rest of the world that I was the first one to introduce her to my language?" Now, who would do this - the producer, who ultimately, has to dole out the money bags, not to mention, the air fares, the put-up costs, the tantrum costs and the recording studio costs for the longer time it takes him/her to rehearse the song and deliver it? Or is it the music director, who (again foolishly assuming that he is of telugu-origin, if not, as they say, all bets are off) lacks the basic comprehension skills of the language, unable to understand the situation he is scoring for and incompetent to correlate the lyrics and the context, cares about just the notes of the song, his instrumentation and his orchestration? Luckily, in this blame game, the playing arena is not far-spread. There are only 2 people of blame and the choices are really few. Producer or the music director?

In the pursuit of variety, the chief ingredient of the song - not the music, not the lyrics, not the rendition, but the soul which is careful concoction of all the above, is sorely missing. It is even improbable to expect a non-native singer deliver the words with the same passion and the same intensity as someone who is quite conversant with the intricacies of the language. So, the singer is not to be faulted, the music director cannot be faulted and the producer should not be faulted. Let's start the blame game again. Who should be targeted for this pathetic state of affairs? The sound recordist, who could have justamped up the sound of the instruments, drowned the entire voice completely, and put the listener off the misery completely? Or the assistants working in the recording room, who are either too shy to correct the mistakes to too afraid to point out the obvious blunders? Yeah, the little guys! The assistants for the music directors, who proof the lyricist's words and fair them up, acting as the go-between between the music director and the high-profile singer. They are to be blamed. Until the industry cleans up the acts and hires new assistants in the recording rooms, the "sidilamgaa vidi nainaa chaesadae praema" (please note the lack of stresses), "raammmaa chilakammaa, praemmaa molakammaa" (please note the springing up of extra unnecessary stresses) would continue unabated. Down with the assistants!

aruvu gontu tecchi yaeDaadi naerpinaa
aruvu aruvae gaani asalu kaadu
telugu palakani gontuni koTTinaa palukunaa
viSwadaabhi raama vinavae sinee seema

- Daarinapoye Dannayya

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Centerlo Mass, Mass lo weight
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