"If things have to improve, one of the two has to happen. Either a new musical phenomenon must emerge in composing, or some playback singer or the other should get into composing, taking charge of the music they get to sing," a new book -- Bollywood Melodies -- quotes Lata as saying.
But Lata is doubtful if either of these will happen. "For the sake of film music, I wish it did," she hopes. But according to the singer, dubbed as the 'nightingale of India', there is no dearth of talented singers in the country.
"It is just that there's no composer to test a singer's range; work on exploring the voice of the singer the way composers used to do in the 1950s."
Lamenting that the emphasis of present-day music is on instant popularity and not on creating something that is original, the book quotes, "Creative music is not happening anywhere -- not in Mumbai, not in the south or even in Bengal. How can you blame the singers alone for it?"
The book, written by Bangalore-based organization development consultant Ganesh Anantharaman, traces the evolution of the Hindi film song to its present status as the cultural barometer of the country, through an evaluation of the works of over 50 leading composers, singers and lyricists -- from K L Saigal to Sonu Nigam, Naushad to A R Rahman, Sahir Ludhianvi to Javed Akhtar.
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