The Pop Generation-Nostalgia Revisited
PrintiView Author: Vineet Roy (Bangalore, India)
Email: vineetroy[dot]mail[at]gmail[dot]com
The Pop Generation – Nostalgia Revisited
I grew up in the 90’s when DD Metro was taking it’s baby steps ,and cable was in it’s infancy in India ,people who have grown up during that time will recollect what it was like ,our childhood was synonymous with uncle Scrooge ,Baloo ,Mowgli and others.
A time when kids still eagerly awaited the Sunday morning for their dose of Chandrakanta ,Shaktiman and Disney Hour ,anyways I am getting nostalgic here and perhaps digressing from the topic of this post.
Anyways it all came to my mind when I saw the post on Doordarshan classics in PFC a few months back ,I still see people digging it out of it’s grave and commenting on it ,if I am not wrong the number of comments are past 300 ,a testament to the love and nostalgia that the 20 something generation has for that bygone era ,anyways I thought that the post didn’t capture the other aspect of the 90’s ,the music videos and private albums.
It all started with Baba Sehgal and his pop brigade ,the “aaja meri gaadi mein baith ja” and “peecha karo” songs ,the catchy tunes and the youthful feeling of the songs was lapped up by the audiences who were perhaps tired of listening to Kumar Saanu and Alka Yagnik crooning their voices in every other song(no offence to the fans of the two singers ) and it started a whole generation of video albums ,with many others following in his footsteps.
But the mai-baap of all pop videos was yet to arrive ,an album which would turn the music world upside down ,yes “Meherbaan and Kadardaan” I am talking about none other than the album “Made in India” by Alisha Chinai ,boy you would have to be there in that time if you were to see the hysteria that the video generated.
Everywhere I went ,the paan-wala ,the chai-wala ,our doodh-wala ,the subzi waala ,the mechanic ,even the machhi wali ,everyone was singing “japan se lekar russia” and every channel and countdown show(another land mark program of the 90’s) ,there were tonnes of them (not the channels ,the countdown shows), and each one of em was playing the song ,I bought the cassette on the second or third day of the song hitting the air waves ,it still plays itself dutifully whenever my father wants to listen to some tunes from his past.
As if this milestone in history wasn’t enough ,down came our very own “dharti-puttar” “Daler Mehndi” in his fashionable trademark matching Pagdi , Lungi and Kurta , his “tunak tunak tun” started it all ,the flood of Punjabi music videos, and from then on if I remember correctly every third music video was a Punjabi music video ,the theme was always the same in those videos ,either the singer himself was the lover or there was always a sadda desi hero who fell in love with this pardesi babe like girl wearing Mini skirts or a short one-piece ,walking around with a gunda like villain in a high-end automobile ,the boy would try to catch the attention of the girl and fail but in the end like all traditional Indian love stories ,sadda desi hero used to walk away with the girl leaving the villain with munh-kala (black face) ,it got boring after a point but the “babes” always spiced up the videos in case the music couldn’t.
And in between there were other revelations whom we enjoyed a lot like KK ,Shubha Mudgal ,Rajeshwari ,shivani ,Sunita Rao ,Lucky Ali ,and bands like Strings,Aryans ,Euphoria,many Pakistani bands others ,even Sonu Nigam debuted with his sweet love story based videos. In fact if you look back many of the artistes we see today made their mark in those days.
Some things which I recollect from those times
-Falguni Pathak’s videos ,very melodious songs(I guess a too much melody for my tastes) with
. almost always the same kind of setting ,a young girl and puppy love.
-Euphoria ,they came with a bang in their first song ,interesting videos ,though Palash didn’t
have the best voice around ,his songs had a kind of energy in them.
-Lucky Ali ,abstract videos with an all white theme.
-Remixes ,good ones by Suketu ,I still listen to “Hum Bewafa hargiz na the”.
-The fact that some videos had interesting story lines ,which stretched into the second or third
releases ,for eg .the song “Piya Basanti Re” ,I remember the curiosity it generated.
But like all cultural phenomenon this was also destined to expire and so it did ,with the advent of the Yash Raj brigade and others Bollywood music came back and the ageing video album stars couldn’t sustain the youthful appeal any longer.
Whenever I look back at those days I remember that the thing which most appealed to me about private music albums was that they were less costly to make and more people could get a chance at making their name in the music Industry plus video albums were always more imaginative ,in addition to the song you had something else to look forward to hah! that is not the case anymore……guess I am getting nostalgic again…..will stop here for now.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
nice topic to pull up, but u have missed a lot. baba sehgal’s thanda thanda pani, sunita rao’s parri hoon mai, shweta shetty’s johny joker etc.
good to recall those days
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hey, u hv mentioned daler mehndi to start the punjabi folk-pop culture, but i guess it was gurdas mann much before him who started it all in late 80’s.
baba sehgal’s aage aage ladki peeche peeche sayaana, duniya kahe baba ho gaya hai deewana…
i hope someone else also remembers that video of nadeem (partner of shravan) in that pilot dress. the song went like.. jab koi pyaar se bulayega, tumko mera pyar yaad aayega…
gosh, tht song was stupid, but it didnt seem so during those days, and i mugged it up coz it was a good song for impressing the girls in school.
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Nice post. i am also a victim of feeling nostalgic about the pop songs of early nineties.
Some corrections are there in the post==
Daler’s first hit was ‘Bolo Ta Ra Ra’
Hum Bewafa was remixed by ‘Instant Karma’ Today known as Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy
And yes, Lucky Ali and Euphoria are like god to me.
See my post about this. I am feeling pretty much nostalgic….
http://dunkdaft.blogspot.com/2005/07/unheard-lost-forgotten.html
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@crazyrals
Yea ,now I feel like the post should have been longer, haven’t covered a lot here…..but my intention was not to present a biopic here ,just to prod people to remember those times.
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@Satyendra
Yes it was Gurdas Mann who was the original badshah of Punjabi pop ,and I remember seeing his numbers on the occassion of Baisakhi on DD ,but his pop was devoid of the chamak dhamak that Daler brought ,it was actually Daler who started the whole video thing.
@Darshit
Sorry for the factual errors ,I just pulled the post out of my memory ,will google more from now on before posting.
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Boondein and Euphoria was an integral part of my memories of late 90s, almost merging into the new millenium. Boondein was tagged as Indipop. But they themselves didn’t accept that tag. Dooba Dooba even today transports me to the sea and the Sun and the days that were part of dreams.
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Though film songs, but there are two songs which I unconditionally remember with the songs you mention. One is “Nahin saamne” – Taal and the other “Saawan barse tarse dil”.
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“purani jeans ..aur guitar”
anyone?
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You made us nostalgic. I loved lucky ali’s o sanam at that time.
there was also remix stuff which also happened around the same time especially the roop tera mastana remix.
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which album was the first pop album in Hindi ? 80’s ? Amit Kumar had released “O Sweetheart” in Mid 1987…..anything before that ?
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For me “Strings” was the best among pop scene at that time..I was crazy abt the song “Sar Kiya” inspite of amatuerish video of that..Remained a life long fan of strings eventhough they disappointed me in their last album(only one song picturised on John Abraham was good)..Euphoria didn’t appeal to me much,didn’t like Palash Sen’s voice as well as music..
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@sharath
to each his own ,I always felt that Strings were a better band if you compared the quality of the songs but their videos were never interesting ,Euphoria on the other hand had “phata-phati”(awesome) videos ,with interesting story lines ,esp “Maaeri” ,”Kya karegi tu “…
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ya you made me remember those good old days!!!I specially used to like Lucky Ali’s songs as all his videos were shot well and had a story.I even liked Shaan’s Tanha Dil and KK’s Pal.Where have they disappeared?I really miss them.
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@7 Subhashish… bang on….Mee too.I dont know why I like these two songs sooo much.Maybe its the mumbai rain and the fun of walking on the streets in rain!!!!And they remind me of another two old songs…Cham cham barse ghata from Priyatama and Rim Jhim gire sawan(lata) from Manzil.
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Oh that reminds me of Ayesha Takia in her teens i guess dancing to the tunes of a remixed version of Nahi Nahi abhi nahi… by DJ Aqeel.
And also a lot of skin show and a few decent remixes by Harry Anand..brother of Anand Raaj Anand.
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Forgot to mention Shaan’s Tanha Dil..superb album..
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