19th Commonwealth Games to be held in Delhi, India from 3rd October, 2010 onwards, have been in the news more for the wrong reasons than for the real objectives of sportsmanship. Investigative journalists dug out so much dirt and mud on one hand and on the other hand, Monsoon is making a mockery of highly exaggerated preparations as claimed by the Organizing Committee under the chairmanship of Suresh Kalmadi, who has now been popular for controversies and scandals rather than for appropriate execution of plans and projects in order to smoothly conducting the games. However, here we would focus upon the 'theme song' of these games composed by the only Oscar winner composer of Bollywood – A. R. Rahman, who, claimed that the song composed by him would be more appealing and beautiful than the one 'waka waka' sung by Shakira for the FIFA World cup 2010 even before he composed it.
This theme song was released by A. R. Rahman on 28 August, 2010 in Gurgaon, Haryana in the presence of eminent personalities from different walks of life and the esteemed members of the Organizing Committee. The initial lines of the song are like this:
Oh yaaron, yeh India bulaa liya / Diwaano yeh India bulaa liya… bulaa liya / Yeh toh khel hai / Bada mail hai / Milaa diya… milaa diya...
Most of Rahman's fans are not very pleased with the song. The comments on different social networking sites about the song are not encouraging. Some of viewers have commented that Rahman has got a bit overconfident. It is his callous approach which brought him down on the popularity charts especially, for this theme song of commonwealth games.
Firstly, Rahman composes music chiefly for Bollywood and Pop Albums. This segment of songs is different from that of composing songs for special occasions. Therefore, it is not Rahman's fault that he could not live up to the expectations of the music-lovers of the Indian Subcontinent. The organizing committee made a mistake in awarding him the contract to compose the song. Composing pop music is totally different from composing a song to suit a specific occasion. The song of Asiad 1982 was composed by Pt. Ravishankar, the well-known classical music maestro of the international repute. His composition Ath Swagatam, Shubha Swagatam echoed the letter and spirit of Indian cultural heritage. On the contrary, Rahman's training of music is based upon Western tradition of music and hence he should not be expected to represent the Indian tradition of melodic beauty. In essence, the fault lies with the organizing committee. Rahman did whatever he could and the song is before us. In the song, there is every element of the popular music. But the Indian ethos is missing. It would have been better had the organizing committee assigned the responsibility to somebody from the field of Indian classical music. Pt. Ravishankar, Pt. Shivakumar Sharma, Pt. Jasraj, many names can be counted. Let us hope that Indian Government would not be so indifferent to the classical musicians of Indian traditions in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment