A GREAT VOICE... WHAT IS THAT?






Pic.: Nicole Gubin

One doesn’t need a great voice to be a great singer, these days. There are highly sophisticated devices in the state-of-the-art studios around, to fix that. Similarly, these days, one doesn’t need a great creative-eye to be a great photographer. The Photoshop is there to fix that!

Well, the up-side of the story is: the music, songs and pictures can come out fast and effortlessly. Even at an extremely low cost. But, the flip-side is: the singers thrive without possessing great voice, the musicians thrive without possessing mastery over their instruments… and, the photographers thrive without possessing the creative eye…

And, in the end, everything and anything goes!

“Years and years of riaz!” “Fourteen years of learning violin or tabla”… Do you get to hear such statements, now a days? Things are to be done fast these days; they need to be done with less fuss…

That’s how the music and songs are recorded today in studios… Every musician and every singer can go there and do his bit and come out… The rest, the technicians will take care of. Likewise, today, if you want a passport-size photo, just sit below the studio-umbrella for a minute… You can leave the studio carrying three-dozen photos. And, the best part is: if you don’t like you face, they can fix it for you, right then and there!

I am, like others, very excited about this fast-and-furious world… the world of ‘instant karma’. Even this typing which I am doing presently, I had gone to a typewriting school after my tenth-standard and learnt it. The typing schools are almost extinct, today. The guys next to me do the same with their single finger!

The world has changed, I know. Everything is done differently from the good-old days…

I must embrace the change. And, I do.

But, this morning, when I heard this 1967 song (from the Hindi film – ‘Hamraaz’ shared by my friend Bupinder Singh)… the way Mahendra Kapoor was singing it… the way the musicians were playing their instruments… the way Saahir Ludhianvi had penned the lyrics… yes, when I was watching this video, my thoughts went to all the so-called singers, musicians and lyricists of today’s generation…




“Oh my God!” I held my breath, “after nearly fifty years, the world has changed, indeed!”

GERALD D’CUNHA
Video: YouTube

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