Music Review: Bombay Talkies

Music Director: Amit Trivedi


This movie promises to bring together different flavours from four directors, but as far as the music goes, the one-man army of Amit Trivedi reworks its magic and conjures a journey through years of the various tones of Bollywood.

The movie is an ode to the Indian film industry (marking its centenary) and the music couldn't have done more justice to the theme. Firstly, the voice selection is remarkable, bringing together the finest voices we have and then embellishing them with a delightful assortment of instrumentals. This becomes fairly evident with the title track sung by Kailash Kher and Richa Sharma. The frequent change of tempo, and the consistent feeling of dreamy motion it lends to the listener, that runs through most songs in this movie, is well represented in this track.

The reprise with various voices packs familiar sounds from Bollywood and presents a 2-minute roller coaster. Not to forget, the lyrics are perky, smooth and well thought-out. Which brings us to the much hum-mable 'Bachchan'. Save the juvenile "Baccha Baccha gaye from bachpan bachpan" opener (which is also catchy!), the words are a perfect tribute to the living legend. Adorned with the rich vocals of Sukhwinder Singh, the song begins like a typical aarti, stumbles upon the Arabian sounds of the rabab and moves into the beat-laden, electric groove peppered with snippets of Bachchan's legendary dialogues in the background.

'Murabba' is another song with two versions on the album, both as different in their tonal quality as two songs could be. It is hard to pick 'the better' of the two, with Javed Bashir's powerful, neo sufi-esque vocals set to the pace of a chuk-chuk engine in one, and Kavita Seth's slightly-husky, slightly-dreamy voice peppered with Trivedi's backing vocals (very reminiscent of songs from 'Udaan') in the other.

Apart from the pacy tracks above, we have Mohit Chauhan, with his Himalayan shepherd voice, singing a soulful, perky 'Akkad Bakkad' - very beautiful lyrics again. All in all, another work of pure art from the Trivedi House! Just a little surprised, the songs are not entirely grabbing all the air-time even after a week of the music release.

Matter of time, I say!

(3.5/5)
--only because I am eternal optimist, and believe better music will waft into my ears someday! :)