Mavrix

Category: Pop culture

  • Anand Bakshi’s Generation-Spanning Work

    [Starting this week, we’ll re-publish here the Bollywood Retrospective series published in DNA blogs. This post was originally published here.] This post is based on a question posed a few years ago on Twitter by film historian Pavan Jha, a passionate follower and chronicler of films and film music. The question – “Name the 5…

  • 2016 Bollywood Music Review and Top 20 Songs

    As in the past, critics were not happy with the state of Hindi film music in 2016. The charge – yet again – was that it Hindi films were using an “assembly line” approach to create songs using multiple composers and re-packaging hit songs from the past. One thing is certain – music is no…

  • 2014 Bollywood Music Review

    2014 was not a great year for Hindi film music. The Indian Express carried a bleak piece discussing the death of Hindi film music in 2014. We have observed the rise of multi-composer albums and albums riding on one or two item songs for a few years now. This trend continued in 2014. The other…

  • “Song Templates” And Innovation In Hindi Film Music

    This post is prompted by a conversation I had yesterday on Twitter regarding a lovely new song that had just come out – the Amit Trivedi composed, K. Mohan sung Kinare (Queen, 2014). @kaurvaki No man. Same singer, same composer, similar mood, similar genres but very different songs. — Param Arunachalam (@taparam) January 29, 2014…

  • 2013 Bollywood Music Review

    Another eventful year had come to an end and it’s time to take stock of year that was for Hindi film music. We did a similar review last year, if you’re interested. 2013 saw the release of 154 films with 999 songs between them. We lost a number of artists in 2013. Some were young…

  • Why Lootera Is A Better Music Album Than Raanjhanaa

    Before I delve into the post, let me state two things: I’d rather not make comparisons but I saw the albums being compared on social media and was disappointed at how dismissive some people were about Lootera – as if it did not even deserve to be compared with Raanjhanaa! I thought it was important…

  • Piracy, Copyright Law and Social Trends

    This post is prompted by a comment on my review of Partners In Crime, a documentary covering the grey areas of piracy. In my view, the grey areas discussed in this DVD do not legitimize piracy, they expose deficiencies in copyright law. Piracy has been around for a long time and will continue to be…

  • Partners In Crime – Documentary Review

    After my posts – Piracy is Mainstream and Why People Don’t Talk About Pirate Consumers – one of the readers of the blog recommended that I watch a documentary called Partners in Crime. I had heard about this documentary on Twitter but never got around to seeing it. I finally saw it last week and I…

  • Why People Don’t Talk About Pirate Consumers

    I engaged in a long debate on Twitter yesterday with popular blogger, Karthik Srinivasan (entire conversation at the end of his post). To boil things down, I was asking why illegal downloaders don’t get called out for doing the wrong thing and his point was that it was not really going to make a difference.…

  • Piracy Is Mainstream

    I’ve been an anti-piracy advocate in my friend circle for many years now. Over time though, I realized that people like me were rare and specially in India, we became outcasts. Friends and relatives look at me like I am nuts when I refuse to lend them my iPod so they can copy songs from…