Non-Bollywood? Well, that’s just a mess!”ĭevraj Sanyal, Managing Director & CEO at Universal Music Group, South Asia -Universal Music Group, had a slightly different take on the matter when asked why A&R wasn’t as big in India. The film world still has a nepotistic, old-school A&R and the new music directors are always looking for new singers, but there is no formal A&R process. He pointed out, “A&R as a concept in the world of entertainment, like most things in India, has to be divided into Bollywood and non-Bollywood because they are separate industries. We reached out to Dhruv Jagasia, CEO - Big Bad Wolf, and former Festival Director, NH7 Weekender, who has been there, seen and done that, for his viewpoint. The other was at NH7 Weekender as My Country My Music, which was called a presentation of Indian film music and its roots in Indian folk music. Then there’s Shankar Mahadevan who had two music initiatives in the past few years - one, a live experience called Kaleidoscope that put the focus on folk artistes around the country. Long, long ago, Vishal Shekhar launched The Raghu Dixit Project when no record label would and later, as independent record label VLT (Vishal Likes This), Vishal got Dhruv Voyage (Dhruv Visvanath) on board. It would be the first time a composer stepped out of the spotlight to work on A&R. The best intentions - to inject fresh talent in the music industry - will come to nothing if talents themselves are not promoted well.Ī&R or artist and repertoire is the division in a record label (think T-Series, Sony Music India or Universal Music, they all have the division) that is responsible for scouting talent and commercially developing the talent into a saleable recording artist and acts as a point of contact between the label and the talent. Unless of course you’re in the music business or are with a record label in this country.Įstablished names still sell and are needed to “move units”. Or what A&R is? You’ll likely draw a blank from all and sundry. Why the history lesson? Ask anyone today what either JAM8 is. The soundtrack and the movie never made it as big as a typical Pritam-led OST would. The answer follows a few tweets later - they composed two tracks for 1920 London as JAM - where Pritam said as much: Kaushik-Akash are the music directors behind #Gumnaam #Afreen from #1920London. Did the ‘new direction’ for Bollywood have a stymied start?īut let’s rewind a bit further, all the way to April 2016, when Pritam tweeted this: Just announced J.A.M 8 (Just About Music) with Kaushik-Akash, who are the first artists of my ‘’A&R’’ music production platform. We know Amitabh Bhattacharya wrote the lyrics to Zaalima and that Arijit Singh and Harshdeep Kaur were on vocals. He doesn’t appear in any interviews since long after the film’s release. While you now knew that it was being spoken of as Pritam’s ‘talent pool’ for up-and-coming artistes who could benefit from his clout and standing in the Hindi film industry, you still wonder who or what Aheer is. For the first time, an A-List Bollywood composer was stepping aside to give newcomers a chance to shine in what is perceived to be a ‘closed’ industry that rarely supports or promotes them. Of course, there was much excitement about this. Two more songs from the album would follow. Somebody named Aheer was credited with composing the song for JAM8. Called JAM8, it came to the fore because of the success of Zaalima, the first single off that film’s soundtrack. And with it, was launched Pritam’s much-touted A&R (Artist and Repertoire) initiative.
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