Independent Content Distribution & Artist Representation In Regional Languages

Soumini Paul Jul 02, 2021

Music is said to be language agnostic. All it requires is a melody and a foot-tapping or head-bobbing rhythm and it can become a commercial success. Having said that, music also has the ability to communicate emotion and that is where lyrics become critical. This is where language plays a pertinent role. I believe, across the world, conveying emotion in a global or national language is less effective than in a language that is one’s mother tongue. In a country like India, this holds a lot of relevance because even though Hindi is the most spoken language, we have 22 official languages and more than 19,500 mother tongues. India’s cultural legacy dates back centuries. While culture can be attributed to several factors including clothing, food, traditional beliefs, communities, etc., one of the biggest influences of culture is language.

We all are aware of the lineage of Bollywood, with its first Hindi film that was released in 1913. This was followed by regional cinema picking up momentum and movies being created across various Indian languages. However, outside of music in the regional cinema when it came to any other kind of regional music, most people would associate it with folk or devotional music. The concept of regional music outside of cinema, folk or devotional was unheard of. Even when the Indi Pop seen began in 1981, with an album composed by Biddu and performed by Nazia Hassan and Zoheb Hassan, it was in Hindi. Interestingly, the first change, introducing regional language, was seen only in 1995 with the release of the first Punjabi Pop album by Daler Mehndi, an album that saw immense commercial success selling more than 20 million units out of which 1 million were sold in Kerala.

With the success of Daler Mehndi, several other Punjabi artists ventured into the scene along with other Indi pop artists singing in Hindi and thus reigned the Indi Pop Industry for more than 8-10 years. Simultaneously, music created by A.R. Rahman for Tamil films were becoming popular all over the country and the world, either in Tamil or dubbed in Hindi and a number of fresh talent was getting discovered. It was A.R. Rahman who introduced rap into his music through the young talent, Blaaze, who soon joined his musical entourage and started composing with him.

The bubbling Indi Pop scene died down gradually towards the early 2000s, only to resurrect in a new avatar where genres were picking up momentum. However, before the decline, there were albums created in the Rock genre by artists like Euphoria who coined the term Hindi Rock and Shubha Mudgal, who was originally known as a Hindustani classical singer but gave a rock flavour to melody and lyrics that would normally be heard in a Thumri or Dadra style.

The game changed with the release of several artists like Rabbi Shergil, Raghu Dixit, Swarathama, Thaikkudam Bridge, Hiphop Tamizah, Sid Sriram, The Circus and many more who gave preference to their language and then the genre. They realised that to build their own true fan base, they need to sing in their language. The need was to break the clutter and be noticed first within their community and then the nation at large. This strategy definitely proved successful and created the ever successful Fan – Talent connect. With the emergence of Satellite TV, YouTube, regionalised social platforms, short-form videos and many more, access to popularity has become completely democratic. While the quality of content will always play an active role but the formula of what is good quality has definitely changed from the days of Indi Pop music. Today, content, its production quality and talent is dependent on the platforms, the language and the region being catered to. No longer are we dealing with one size fits all. Talent has always needed to connect with its fans. Today, the ease at which that is possible should be taken as an opportunity to exploit.

Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that we now see even the record labels who had moved towards Bollywood after the decline of Indi pop or even had to shut shop, revive their interest and business in the non-film space searching for talent and launching them. The changes in the approach are of course, loud and clear. In the 90s, Indi Pop artists were discovered, honed and nurtured based on their talent and it was the record labels who gave them an image and popularity. Today, most of artists need to build a certain fan base and popularity before they can be signed on by a label. With music consumption having moved completely digital, through audio and video streaming apps and access to data being easier and cheaper, every audio or video OTT player is focused on the regional consumer who feels more connected to their own culture and language first.

As they say, we live in two types of India – India and Bharat. The time has come for Bharat to shine and to do that, you have to look at 22 languages making a whole as against just one language. I am sure a time will come where we may also start seeing content and music created as per a dialect instead of just a broadly-spoken language.

The author is Soumini Sridhara Paul, Senior Vice President, Hungama Artist Aloud