'Rakht' music is like wild night at disco

Film: "Rakht"; Producer: T Series: Composed by: Anand Raj Anand, Shamir Tandon, Anand Milind; Lyrics by Ajay Jhingran, Salim Bijnauri, Salim

Bijnauri.

Nowadays one composer and one lyricist aren't enough to sustain a whole album. Hence we've these multi-purpose soundtracks where a bit of this, and a bit of that is meant to add up to a substantial uproar in the charts.

The inspiration for this album seems to be Sanjay Gupta's "Kaante". The same steamy, smouldering vocals underpinned by tunes that salute the spirit of unstoppable ebullience, the same night-club ambience and feeling of seductive energy oozing out of beats that borrow heavily from international charts.

There is the Ritika Sahani/Sunidhi Chauhan song. Such 'wow-me' tracks have a history as old as Saira Banu and "Main kamsin hoon nadaan hoon" in "Aayee Milan Ki Bela" and "Saat kunwaron mein ek kunwari" in "Farishtay". It pays to blow one's trumpet, and I think the neglected Ritika does it much better.

This album is swamped with tracks and composers. Hence there's no real compositional profile to the tracks. Instead, we get a freewheeling sort of all-purpose sound targeted at the fans of Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Anand Raj Anand.

The much-vaunted "Kya maine socha tha" track, which amalgamates Shaan's Hindi lyrics into the international pop hit "One love" is an experiment with tooth - and nail!

Spiky rhythms flow out of the Sufi sounds of Krishna's "Sach hai sach hai", while Anuradha Paudwal and Alka Yagnik fuse tonsils to gargle "Ishq bedardi".

When we think back to the chartbusters where two female singers like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle fused their awesome talents to sing a dance tune like "Hum banjaron ki baat mat poocho ji" in "Dharamveer", we can only shake our head rather than our feet vigorously.

Heavy Middle Eastern influences leave a gulf between what Hindi cinema wants and what it gets in the charts. It isn't very clear who has composed what.

Pooled in a passionate spiral, the music of "Rakht" is like a wild night out at the disco. Who cares what's playing as long as the soul gets its chicken soup? Click the Movie button below for more info:
Rakht