The music industry today lacks creativity, says Taufiq Qureshi
Despite being born in a family of classical music legends with his father being Ustad Alla Rakha and his brother being Ustad Zakir Hussain, Taufiq Qureshi was never concerned about reaching a certain height of popularity. “I don’t think there is any pressure simply because my father always said ‘Don’t try to ape me, you have to be like yourself. I have already played this, so, you try something different’, and that stayed with me,” says Qureshi. The percussionist, recently performed at AAMAD 2020 with his band Surya and Mumbai Stamps, and singer sister duo Kamakshi and Vishala Khurana.
THE DJEMBE MAGIC
Always discovering new sounds, being a percussionist has given Qureshi the best opportunity to dabble with a variety of instruments such as the djembe, duff, bongos and even the batajon. Ask Taufiq about whether he has a favourite instrument, and he immediately says, “djembe”. He says, “I put to use my father’s knowledge of the tabla, on the djembe.” Qureshi has been researching and practising the African instrument for many years now, and is quick to say that he doesn’t want to replace the tabla, as he emphasises, “the tabla is the most versatile percussion instrument ever made.”
But he is definitely not one to limit himself while exploring Indian sounds and is also known to experiment with voice and breath percussion. “For breath percussion, it is important to have your circular breathing going, in order to continuously perform a rhythm,” says Qureshi, who has been largely influenced by folk music. He adds that voice percussion is a medium, which wasn’t previously popular in India but what many people today call beatboxing has picked up since then. However, he expresses a concernn saying that performers just creating beats for ten seconds is not really worth it. “A lot of these kids are doing beatboxing but are trying to copy the West. I wish that someday one of the kids will challenge me with a creation of their own,” explains the 57-year-old, who worked on percussion to create the rhythm for the title track of Dhoom 2 (2006), by simply using trash material.
THE TH BOLLYWOOD EFFECT
The film industry is familiar territory for the musician, and he is quite thankful to have had the opportunity to work on some great films, most recently, Street Dancer 3D. But he has his reservations on the kind of music currently being produced in the industry. Qureshi says when he started in Bollywood in 1987, electronic music was just eeping e in but musicians were till creating the patterns to make the songs. “With technologye going so far ahead, you have to just drag and drop a loop but creativity has been lost in the process, and that is why they have to rely on electronically engineered music,” he reveals. “Anybody can become a music director today. You don’t need to learn or understand music to become a director and most of the music coming out now is of a very average level,” he says, adding, “It is becoming difficult today to understand which music director has created the song because everything sounds the same.”
Having been part of the industry for a long time, Qureshi is a strong proponent of collaborations, as through that, musicians get to melt and blend and share their musical ideas. If there is one other aspect of Qureshi that stands out the most, it is that he is really expressive on stage. So, it is no doubt then when we ask him if he prefers recording studios or live performances, he chooses the latter as he likes to get an instant reaction from the audience.