In an interview with Outlook, Salim Merchant spoke about the remix and remake culture, the current music trend and more.
Nowadays, it's very rare we get to listen to original songs or music. Most composers follow the shortcut route to remake or remix an old song and put it in a film. Several iconic songs have been recreated in the last few years. The soul and essence of the original songs are often lost in the recreated versions leaving music lovers disappointed. Salim Merchant of the Salim-Sulaiman duo is also not happy with the remake or remix culture if there is no purpose in it.
Recently, Salim-Sulaiman recreated the music of Mithun Chakraborty starrer, 'Disco Dancer' and presented it in a broadway style on stage in Mumbai. Before its premiere, in an interview with Outlook, Salim Merchant spoke about the remix or remake culture, the current music trend and more.
Talking about the 'remixes and remakes', he called it a 'scripted exercise if there is no purpose'. You can't put a song of 'Delhi 6' in a movie which has no connection to 'Delhi 6'. He added, "You can't put a song from the film, 'Fashion' in some other film which has no connection with that. You can't put a song from 'Bombay' in a film which has no connection, storywise or music wise in another film."
On recreating 'Disco Dancer', Salim further said, "Here we made a remake of 'Disco Dancer' because we are remaking the entire film...Mithun da's look, Bappi Da's music, the entire story, cast, crew, screenplay, costumes, everything. We are recreating these things and there is a purpose...a very strong purpose to recreate the music. Recreation should only happen if there's a purpose or some link.
He added, "Had the film been called 'Delhi 7' or 'Delhi 8', then we can take the songs of 'Delhi 6'. There is still some connection."
Salim also said if one is recreating a song, there should be a purpose. He said, "The soul and all are secondary. Firstly, the purpose should be there."
Earlier, all the songs of a film used to be chartbusters which is very rare nowadays. When asked the reason behind it, the 'Ishq Wala Love' singer said, "People are focusing to make music that is popular. Earlier when they used to make songs, they used to focus on making good songs and those songs became hit songs. Now their focus is to make hit songs, that's why it's a big miss. Most people make music that works for reels on Instagram. It's sad. You should try to make good music and good music works in reels as well."