Musicians rehearse for recording a poll song in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 5: These are sad times for music connoisseurs and they can blame the upcoming civic polls for that. The music of Hindi chart busters, at times laced with Odia lyrics, replete with adulation of a particular party or a candidate happens to be the most used medium of garnering attention and raising popularity.

The list of such songs are not just limited to Hindi tracks such as Om Shanti Om, Gandi baat, Chin ta taa chita chita but even comprises Odia film songs such as Balunga toka. Interestingly, bhajans and Laxmi Puran songs are also proving to be most sought after tracks.

Bharat Chandra Behera, a musician who provides the recording facility here, said that most of the youngsters prefer tunes of film and album songs while women candidates mostly go for Laxmi Puran and bhajans.

Behera said candidates came to him with a huge list of songs, but he took the order after seeing the availability of tracks.

“I have a limited number of tracks and I put these tracks before the candidates. According to their choices, I then make music for them,” said Behera.

As he charges very low price from the candidates, most of the Independent contestants, who cannot afford much, prefer his services. He said that the cost depended on the number of songs and dialogues kept in the CD and he usually demanded anything between Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 from each candidate.

Behera said the candidates who wanted to record their music from reputed singers had to pay more and thus they went to Cuttack where major recording studios were located.

The compact discs contain four to five songs intermixed with slogans and speech of the candidate. Popular bhajans such as Nandighosh tora ataki gala, Madhav hai madhav and Dina re suruj to raati re taara are preferred by the candidates. Along with bhajans, some candidates also prefer folk songs such as Phula baula beni. Normally, the contestants want their campaign CD to contain a bhajan followed by a speech and a popular song and the cycle keeps repeating.

Veteran singer-cum-composer Manmath Mishra said that he used to record such songs for the candidates, but this time he had recorded only for a known candidate. He said that the tracks of popular songs were created and then the election lyrics were put into it.

He also explained that as these tunes and tracks were used for poll campaigning, which was for a public purpose, the copyright violation angle was overlooked.

“Such practice exists everywhere in the country during election and no issues have been raised till date,” said Mishra. He demands between Rs 7,000 and 15,000 from the candidates. Even the candidates said that parody of popular songs attract the voters who paid attention to what was being sung.

“Campaign through songs is more acceptable by voters than the bland speeches,” said Deepak Kumar Mohapatra, an Independent candidate. Interestingly, very few candidates show the expenditure on audiocassettes while others claim that their friends have prepared the cassettes.

The BJP’s Bhubaneswar District Committee found another arsenal of attraction. They used street plays to highlight the “misrule” of the BJD government on the inaugural day of their campaign.