In ‘Guns & Gulaabs’, Netflix’s recent comedy-crime caper set in the ’90s, Dulquer Salmaan plays a narcotics officer addicted to Bollywood numbers. So much so that he even waits in his jeep for a song to get over before stepping out to conduct a raid! In one scene, he is dreamily listening to the Shailendra-hit ‘Hoga tumse pyara kaun’ but hits pause hurriedly when there’s a springy drum beat alien to his ears. He whips the cassette out, sees the legend ‘With Jhankar beats’ on the cover and throws it away in disgust.
Former IAS officer and vintage music lover Chiranjiv Singh says he did quite the same thing a few decades ago! Repulsed by the ‘Jhankar beats’ added to Punjabi songs of the great Noor Jehan, he threw away a new cassette he had bought with great excitement!
Millennials and Gen Zs may not identify with such dramatic reactions to beats. But for those of us who grew up listening to ‘80s and ‘90s Bollywood hits (and still do, sometimes guiltily), ‘Jhankar beats’ was Ranveer Singh — you either loved it or loathed it — there was no middle ground. These were the remixes before remixes. Once the Bally Sagoos and Biddus came onto the scene, Jhankaars beat an organic retreat.
But what were these beats really? An extra soundtrack of fast-paced dhol, lots of bass, and the occasional ‘ghunghroo’ (chan chan) mostly created on a percussion pad added to original songs and released anew. Importantly, these cassettes were priced much lower than the originals.
Internet lore tells us that in the mid-80s, several cassette companies were set up, but these newbies found it hard to compete with the giant that was HMV, which had a virtual monopoly. A unified head-scratching exercise resulted in this invention, which was so bad that it was good.
Unfortunately for purists, the cassettes were a hit and became the go-to music for dance parties, discos and dandiya nights, thanks to their added ‘jhatka’. Auto and taxi drivers, especially those who had subwoofers and speakers in their jazzy vehicles, loved the ‘Jhankar beats’ versions of originally mellow songs like ‘Saathiya tune kya kiya’ (‘Love’, 1991) or ‘Jeeye toh jeeye kaise’ (‘Saajan’, 1991). It was another matter that these beats could convert even the most melodious numbers into cacophony. If you want to experience one such horror, hop over to YouTube and subject yourself to ‘Kora kagaz tha ye mann mera’ (‘Aradhana’, 1969) with ‘Jhankar beats’. Shudder!
But, but. Curiously enough, sometimes they worked and despite my many misgivings, I confess I have loved listening to certain albums with the maligned beats going jing-chak jing-chak in the background. A fine example of this would be the mediocre songs from ‘Vansh’ (1992), which inexplicably became addictive with the addition of these beats. So much was I in love with the ‘Jhankaar beats’ version of these songs that I stole the cassette from an unsuspecting uncle, despite owning the original version!
Chiranjiv Singh says remixes such as these (as well as colourised versions of old movies) are a corruption of cultural property and must be strongly condemned. Indeed, in the disgust on Dulquer’s face is a story of a whole generation of music lovers who tolerated this trashing of their beloved songs while sometimes grudgingly grooving to them.