Hot music for the next year

Small will be beautiful. Technology made making music so easy, that no single genre stood out. In 2010, only small indie labels staffed by true music lovers will make a difference.

In the last decade, there’s been no new trend as such. Everything coexisted: jungle, dub, retro rock, nu metal, folk, everything! This was because of technology. We had home PCs with samplers, where we could cut and paste an Arab woman’s singing with a disco beat if we chose to. Different styles not only co-existed, they blended. All with the click of a mouse – no need to go to the studios and shell out life savings for one track!

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Another reason no single trend stood out is that the record industry crashed. We no longer bought what they wanted us to. We listened to what bloggers recommended rather than magazine writers or MTV (who don’t even play music anymore). We downloaded the one track from an entire album that we liked. And our levels of concentration lowered. We talked on the phone while we drove, we surfed the Net while we ate. We multi-tasked seriously! How could any trend last more than a season in a fast world like this?

New notes

Which brings us to the decade coming up. What will influence the music we will now make?

The way the world is shaping up, a lot of new factors are going to influence the music scene. First, with global recession and rising unemployment, the mood is going to be sombre, so maybe we can expect cheery, feel-good music. Also, the ecological disasters that await us will mean changing the way we live. Power tariffs are set to rise, so we will no longer be able to keep our PCs on all day and night. Huge stadium shows may become a thing of the past. The way we chop vast amounts of forests to make goods including guitars and drums etc., will have to stop, which will again impact the music industry and hence the way we make music. Maybe some deep, soul-searching music is what we can expect!

We are the world?
That was the world scenario as I see it. But let’s shift to Bollywood. Hindi film music used to be based on raags and classical and folk music for the longest time. Sure, there were O P Nayyar, R D Burman, et al, bringing a lot of western influences to the mix, but classical-based music was king.

Today, most of us have satellite TV. We’ve had it for almost 20 years. We’ve been tuned into MTV style music (from when it was a music channel) and their videos for all these years. But things have changed big time. Classical music has long gone and been replaced with big synth hooks, mainly Punjabi style grooves mixed with hip-hop, trance etc. The songs are shot to look like international music videos, only instead of a Shaggy or a Beyonce, we have local actors hamming it up as desi ‘Mr Lova Lovas’ or divas.

Rahman just won an Oscar for his music. India has caught up with the rest of the world... but have we really?
The food of love right now, the whole world is looking at India to rediscover music and their love for it. If they had a look at Bollywood now, they’d be looking into a mirror, only not quite... it’d be like one of those mirrors you’d see at a museum of horrors! Also, because of the music industry crash, non-film music business in India is at an all-time low. Couple this with the fact that the music channels don’t play music anymore, and it’s beginning to look like the only musicians are the desi heroes of film. These days, the only time you see anybody with a drumstick or a guitar in their hands on TV is when you watch Hindi film promos!

So, what’s the future?
I believe independent labels are the way forward. Smaller labels with real people promoting music because of their love for it and selling that music online. Cutting production costs (shipping, printing etc) and making smaller gross profits, but building a loyal fan base. Bollywood would be the wrong place to look for fresh inspirational impetus. But at the same time, it is vastly important to have a big brother like Bollywood for the independent musician. Like the movie Rock On!! has suddenly made the media and the public take notice of the weird, long-haired, black T-shirt wearing kid, who doesn’t seem to accept conventional society.