Superhit Muqabla

Malik, who can always be trusted to add something of his own to a song, decided to take it one step further. Thus a Raag Durbari composition ended up being sprinkled with words like dhum taara and 8216;wicked8217;.

8216;8216;We8217;ve tried to redefine the concept,8217;8217; says Malik. 8216;8216;It8217;s the same but yet not the same. Farah wanted a cool qawwali. The conventional Yeh Ishq Ishq Hai Ishq wouldn8217;t have worked.8217;8217;

SRK8217;s Tum Se Milke Dil Ka Hai Jo is not the only one. Bollywood is rediscovering an old love8212;that was taken to cult standards by Nasir Hussain in 1980s classics like Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin.

In its Y2K4 avatar, however, the qawwali has an all-new sound and style of presentation. Moving away from the typical boy vs girl muqabla, film-makers are almost treating the qawwali as the latest version of an item number.

Take Owais Husain, for instance. As co-writer of father MF Husain8217;s Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities, he didn8217;t want to treat the sublime beauty Noor-Un-Ala penned by the painter-director himself as just another qawwali.

Husain Jr8217;s recipe is simple: 8216;8216;Give the same ingredient to two cooks and they8217;ll dish up different stuff. Give me an egg, I8217;ll make a souffle, not an omelette.8217;8217;

He terms the song that introduces Tabu as path-breaking in terms of its styling. 8216;8216;I wanted to take the routine qawwali to another level and play with the medium,8217;8217; he says. A visual delight, the song is reminiscent of a Husain canvas and presents an interesting interplay of light and shadow. And the reason Husain Sr wrote the lyrics himself was because 8216;8216;the song is in pursuit of noor which means beauty. If we8217;d asked a lyricist to describe noor he would have ended up talking about love.8217;8217;

But for some, noor and ishq are the same when seen in the context of the Supreme Being. Bhangra King Daler Mehndi, the voice behind Maqbool8216;s soul song Tu Mere Rubaru Hai is glad he didn8217;t Punjabi-pop the classical composition. 8216;8216;I didn8217;t care if the qawwali wasn8217;t the rage at a discotheque but I wanted it to play in a dargah. The words are for the beloved as well as for the love of Allah.8217;8217; Mehndi, who has learnt Hindustani classical singing from Ustad Rahat Ali Khan, is kicked that the Maqbool qawwali is playing non-stop in the market areas of Ajmer Sharif and Nizam-ud-din Aulia. The qawwali is also making an appearance in Subhash Ghai8217;s forthcoming film Kisna. An Ismail Darbar composition, it has been sung by Rashid Khan, Alka Yagnik and Hariharan. Sushmita Sen has been pencilled in to dance on the sufiana number. Says Ghai, 8216;8216;A well-presented qawwali can bring a lot of energy and emotions in the situation, yet it can be disastrous if you don8217;t have the right situation for it in your film.8217;8217;

As Malik says, 8216;8216;The qawwali wave is on. I reject ten offers daily. An ordinary maker can8217;t do justice to it.8217;8217; The original master8212;Naushad8212;who composed the eternal Teri Mehfil Mein Kismat Aazma Ke Hum Bhi Dekhenge in Mughal-E-Azam is composing one too. For Akbar Khan8217;s Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story. An old flame it might be, but there8217;s a new attraction.