New tunes fail to recreate old magic

Dil cheez kya hai… crooned Asha Bhonsle to Khayyam's eternal score. Music an entire generation still swears by. An effect that Tumhari mehfil mein aa gaye hain... came nowhere close to recreating.

The jury may still be out on remakes like Jai Santoshi Maa, Don and Umraao Jaan, but the verdict on their music is clear. With the trade also attributing the failure of these films to their insipid music, the knives are out.

"It is difficult to re-create a bygone era. It needs guts. Sanjay Leela Bhansali and I proved it with Devdas. But that seems to have been lacking in the music of these movies," says Ismail Darbar.

Darbar doesn't hide his disappointment with Umrao Jaan. "Anu Malik seems to have taken the audience for granted. I don't think he even tried to match up to the old Umrao Jaan," he says.

As for Don, he says, "I respect Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy but they've done a very thanda score for Don."

Aadesh Srivastav says Malik copied tunes from the 40s and 50s for Umrao Jaan. "Salaam is very well-written by Javedsaab (Javed Akhtar) but the tune is a straight lift from Mohd Rafi's classic, Tumhari zulfon ke saye main shaam kar loon ga," he says. "With Javedsaab as lyricist and JP Dutta as director, what made him copy from old songs is a million-dollar question," he adds .

While recreating the songs of Jai Santoshi Maa is a next-to-impossible task, Don, Srivastava says, was a disappointment. "They sailed through only because of Shah Rukh Khan," he says.