Recently, Bollywood has composed songs
that indicated turbulence in society. Bollywood is known for its cheesy songs
which contain a lot of romance and some highly nonsensical lyrics. But,
recently this industry has surprised us with songs based on social issues.
Sometimes, these songs are composed in a musical way that signifies protest against
social issues.
Some of the songs that have proved to be pathbreaking are –
1. Bandeh – This is a song by the band named the Indian Ocean which still sounds very refreshing and it pictures the 1993 Mumbai blast in the movie “Black Friday”. The sheer brutality of the blast was captured in this song. The phrase, “Arre mandir yeh Chup hai, are masjid yeh gumsum… ibaadat thak padegi” still stands out today even after a decade.
2. Give me sunshine – Ali Fazal stole the show with this song. This song genuinely shows how a student feels after he fails to match up to their expectations. ‘Saari umar hum mar mar ke jee liye, kuch pal to ab humein jeene do..’ speaks about how students live while studying in universities and how pressurized they are.
3. Khoon Chala – This song is from Rang De Basanti, a revolutionary movie in its time. Candle Light protest in this movie with this song in the background was epic. Every audience loved this scene and this only made candle march popular all over India. The phrases, ‘badan se tapak kar, zameen se lipatkar, galiyon se rastonse ubharkar, umarkar’ line still gives goosebumps to people.
4. Janta Rocks – This song was a part of Prakash Jha’s movie Satyagrah. The video showed lots of random kinds of stuff like money in blankets, cricket, swiss banks to talk about rampant corruption. The song was quite packed with punch honestly.
5. Ranaji – The songs in Anurag Kashyup’s disturbingly good Gulaal, are sharp combinations of satire, folk, and protest politics. The expert of Piyush Mishra’s lyrics lies in correlating love with political analogies. In one verse, it correlates love with the way the US blatantly roosted itself in Iraq.
6. Azaadi – The anger and frustration of this song in Zoya Akhtar’s movie Gully Boy were epic. Lines like ‘Haan mera bhai yeh toh noton ki sarkar hai naa’ to call out the roughish political class. And ‘Isstemal karr tu zubaan kabhi’ signifies how a boy from a poor family fails to use his voice in front of rich people.
7. Mehengai Daayen Hai - Featured in the popular movie of that time Peepli Live which dealt with the harrowing reality of suicide done by farmers, the song goes ‘Hai sakhi saiyan toh khoob hi kamaat hai mehangyi dayan, khaye jaat hai’ (My husband earns a lot but the inflation ‘witch’ gobbles up everything). Instead of anger, the song uses black humor to make its point. The song also harks back to ‘Mehengayi Maar Gayi’ from Manoj Kumar’s 1974 hit ficl m, Roti, Kapda aur Makaan.
Written by - Akash Agrawal
Edited by - Daity Talukdar
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