Indipop swings hips at home and abroad
By Mian Ridge
NEW DELHi, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Daler Mehndi is India’s grooviest Sikh.
Wearing a beaming smile beneath his jaunty turban, he dances bhangra style – a freestyle blend of traditional Punjabi folk dance and energetic, polished disco gyrations – to his catchy, upbeat songs on Indian MTV.
Along with stars like Lucky Ali, A.R. Rahman and Alisha, he is part of the seven-year-old phenomenon known as Indipop – a fusion of Western dance music and more classical Indian sounds and rhythms – that is swinging hips across the subcontinent.
The fastest-growing segment of the Indian music industry, Indipop’s annual growth rate is about 30 percent, six times more than long-time market leader ``Bollywood’’ film music. It is also expanding into a potentially vast overseas market.
The emergence of an urban consumer class and exposure to foreign influences through satellite television, imported films and the Internet has tuned Indian popular culture to Western tastes.
The same media have also engendered a growing interest in subcontinental popular culture among Indians and non-Indians living abroad.
THE LURE OF THE FOREIGN MARKET
``Between the U.K. and the U.S., the market for Indian music is worth 50 million pounds ($80 million) a year,‘’ Pradip Mohapatra, managing director of music firm Saragema Plc, told Reuters recently.
``We have done research in the U.K. and the U.S. and the results showed that there was a huge untapped market.‘’
Bollywood film music already has many buyers among the 10 million Indians living abroad and there are hopes that Indipop might prove an equally big hit.
``For every million units of film music we sell in India, we sell 500,000 overseas,‘’ said Rajat Kakar, sales director at Sony Music India.
``This music is deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche, but Indipop also has huge potential if marketed right.‘’
Sony believes that success will come by introducing Indipop to the market on the back of film music.
Last year, 600,000 copies of the pop-like soundtrack to the film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'' (Something Happens’') were snapped up abroad, which made it the best-selling album outside India.
While Indipop stars like Mehndi and A.R. Rahman already have had considerable success outside India, the big push is yet to come.
It is estimated that Sony , HMV, EMI’s (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: EMI.L) Virgin and Seagram’s (Toronto:VO.TO - news) Polygram have invested nearly $50 million since 1997 to develop Indian pop musicians with overseas appeal.
Reaching the international market is expensive and tricky as 40 percent of the market is thought to be plagued by piracy, but Indian companies are attracted by the potentially high returns.
While a music cassette in India costs around 100 rupees ($2.30), cassettes in the United States retail at up to $12.
``Sales overseas constitute 15-20 percent of our sales volume but earn 25 percent of the revenue. It is big business,‘’ said Kakar.
THE BOLLYWOOD LEGACY
In terms of publicity, conditions for marketing Indian music have never been better.
In an age where popular music is largely marketed through visual media such as television and the Internet, Indipop is well up to the task to market itself with the best packaging.
India’s musical taste has long been cultivated by Bollywood’s colourful, highly romanticised, song-and-dance films.
As a result, Indian popular music is commonly associated with stylised images, and pop stars, like actors, hinge their success on personal appeal and magnetism.
``Pop gives you the opportunity to develop the singer’s personality in a way that film music doesn’t,‘’ says Rahul Kapuria, vice president of sales for Magnasound India.
As Indipop looks set to supercede film music in the market, television is the breeding ground for India’s new stars.
THE POWER OF TV AND THE NET
In 1994, the Channel V music channel was launched in India under Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV operation as an alternative to the local MTV channel, which tended to play a greater proportion of Western music.
Following Indipop’s explosion, both channels now play round-the-clock, home-grown pop, boosting sales in India and promoting artists with a snazzy appeal. Indipop is also increasingly broadcast on MTV’s international channels.
The Web is also being used to pry open the foreign market.
For instance, RPG Music International, which retails music through its site www.saragema.com, posted sales of three million pounds in the past financial year ending March 1999, a figure it expects to rise to 3.6 million pounds in the current year.
INDIAN SOUL
Despite all the marketing to Western tastes, Indipop retains a uniquely Indian character.
Many videos are obviously influenced by Bollywood. Even those that do not follow the favoured formula of mountainous backdrops and women dancing in bright rain-drenched saris, still feature distinct Indian settings, style and fashion.
Indipop music itself is often produced with traditional Indian instruments, and its various lyrical shades – Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati – do not include English beyond the odd phrase.
But the language barrier should not put off foreign audiences.
Indipop relates to human feelings,'' said Kuparia. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics.‘’ ($1=1.60 pounds, $1=43.5 rupees)