Page 37 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

Once Upon A Time | Music
When pop
went desi
In a span of 25 years, Indipop
arrived, boomed… and then
slowly faded out.
Narendra Kusnur examines the
rise and decline of the genre
Around this time 25 years ago, the Mumbai
office of the record label Magnasound was extra-
busy. Its next release would be Alisha Chinai’s
Made In India, composed by Biddu. Released
in May 1995, the album was a huge success,
selling five million units. The title track’s video,
directed by Ken Ghosh and starring model
Milind Soman, was splashed over television.
Somewhere around that time, the term
‘Indipop’ was coined. Besides Magnasound,
Crescendo Music, which eventually tied up
with international giant BMG, produced a
series of hits in this genre. By the end of 1996,
we had artistes like Daler Mehndi, Colonial
Cousins, Lucky Ali, Mehnaz, Anaida, Suchitra
Krishnamurthy, Sukhbir and the sibling duo
of Shaan and Sagarika. Channel V was already
huge in India. With MTV being launched as a
24-hour channel in January 1996, music videos
were the in thing, and video jockeys (VJs)
became youth icons.
Desi energy
Yes, 2020 marks 25 years since the Indipop
boom. For a good part of the late 1990s, the
genre fulfilled its objective of providing a
37
Alisha Chinai
good alternative to Hindi film music which
dominated the market. Sadly enough, the craze
subsided by the end of the decade, and film
music never seemed threatened till recently.
While the euphoria lasted, many youngsters
dreamt of becoming the next Indipop star, just
like they are today thinking of being the next
YouTube sensation.
As a style, Indian pop had existed quite some
time before 1995. Biddu first released the
albums Disco Deewane, Star and Young Tarang
in the 1980s, with Pakistani sibling duo Nazia
and Zoheb Hassan. Gurdas Maan spread the
reach of Punjabi music. Suneeta Rao had the
hit song ‘Paree’, and Alisha Chinai had albums
like Baby Doll and Madonna. But it was Baba
Sehgal’s 1992 album Thanda Thanda Pani
which set the ball rolling. Shweta Shetty soon
released Johnny Joker.
MTV had a short daily segment which focused
on international music. In 1994, when Channel
V came in as a 24-hour channel under the Star
TV network, artistes and music companies felt
it was a good platform to showcase their latest
videos and thus promote albums. When MTV
SENIORS TODAY | Issue #7 | January 15, 2020