I'm very unhappy with Bollywood's current music scenario: Javed Akhtar

Javed Akhtar has an objection with Bollywood's present treatment of music.

At the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, the song-writer expressed grief at the music being produced and explained what's missing.

"I am very unhappy with the present music scenario in Bollywood. The music that is being produced is not very sympathetic to lyrics any more," said Akhtar.

"First of all, they do not get good situations because there is more razzmatazz than emotional depth in the stories. So the situation for songs is not very emotional."

He then added, "Besides, the tunes the writers are getting today are not very conducive for writing poetry because of the tempo and the orchestration. The tempo is such that the words do not get established. They do not have the space to breathe."

Possibly his biggest qualm with the music is that all the songs are "treated like clap songs".

"On the other hand, the music is so loud... every song is treated like a clap song. So the percussion is often above the voice and the music gets ahead of words. So you just can’t understand what the person is singing. May be you only know the ‘Mukhra’ (beginning of a song) and the rest of it gets lost in the cacophony."

But they cannot sing if the tune is not worth humming, or the words are not clear. The listeners should not go to the words, the words should come to them," said Akhtar.

Javed Akhtar has received multiples awards for his works, namely his lyrics in Hindi blockbusters Godmother, Border and Lagaan.