Listening To Remakes Of Garba Track ‘Kesariyo Rang’ And Falguni Pathak’s ‘O Sajana’ Is Breaking Our Hearts A Little!
The music remixes era does not seem to be coming to an end in the Hindi film industry. Rather it appears the era has just begun. I was okay with these old songs being remade to an extent but things became personal when Garba songs began to be remixed and remade! Being a Gujarati, I am a true-blue Garba fan and love doing the steps to the old folk tunes. So, you can imagine my shock when I first heard the ‘Kamariya’ song from the film Mitron! And to add to my horror, people were doing Garba to this track and enjoying it as well!
This song was followed by ‘Chogada’ from Loveyatri and this was my breaking point. But the making of the Garba mashup did stop here. On Tuesday, September 20, a new remix of one of my favourite folk tracks ‘Kesariyo Rang’ was dropped. The track was sung by Dev Negi and Asees Kaur and features Shantanu Maheshwari and Avneet Kaur.
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The song starts with Avneet and Shantanu entering a Garba pandal and a tagline that reads ‘celebrate love’ also flashes across the screen. *sigh* What I fail to understand is why the song-makers feel the need to add a love story in a Navratri song? Shouldn’t the focus be on the dance, the Garba steps, and the traditional costumes?
Coming to the lyrics of the song, ‘Kesariyo Rang’ is a Gujarati song as the name suggests. So, shouldn’t most part of the lyrics be in Gujarati? Just keeping the chorus of the song in Gujarati does not suffice. Also, another thing that I find a little hard to comprehend is why don’t the lyrics and the music video match. Clearly, the word ‘garbo’ is in the chorus so, shouldn’t there be an orange-decorated garbo in the video?
Also, a day before, Neha Kakkar dropped a new song called ‘O Sajna’, which is the remake of the Garba queen Falguni Pathak’s hit track ‘Maine Payal Hai Chankayi’. I have some of my fondest memories of dancing to this song in my childhood. And the remix absolutely did not do justice to the benchmark set by Pathak. Most of the lyrics did not make sense to me and again, the video and the lyrics were quite disconnected.
I strongly feel that if remixes or song remakes are unavoidable, the original artist should be called in to recreate their own song. For instance, I loved how Neeraj Shreedhar sang the original Bhool Bhoolaiyaa title track and also Bhool Bhoolaiyaa 2’s track as well! This gives the original artist to recreate the magic of their own hit along with adding new elements that they see fit and will go well with the aesthetic of the song. Because no one other than the original artist can do justice to a track sung by them.
Also read: ‘Boom Padi’ Song From ‘Maja Ma’: Shreya Ghoshal’s Vocals And Madhuri Dixit’s Dance Moves Make This Garba Track Full On Majja!
I genuinely hope that song-makers keep these things in mind before randomly making remixes and remakes of other tracks up ahead. But as listeners, original hit tracks have an emotional connection with us and poorly made remixes mar the whole experience of listening to them!
