Peepli Live – Music Review

With its simple rustic tune and arrangement, Chola Maati Ke Ram has an old-worldly charm about it, complete with singer-composer Nageen Tanvir‘s (Habib Tanvir’s daughter) earthy voice. And provides the perfect start to the soundtrack, setting the tone. There aren’t many people adept at incorporating folksy elements in their music as Indian Ocean are. So it is that they enter with a re-rendition of one of their best tracks in the said genre, Des Mera from Jhini. While it is as always a pleasure listening to this one too, it also painfully reminds one of the absence of Asheem. It is the rework of the same track though, Des Mera II, that completely stumps you, with its brilliant instrumental sequences.
Indian Ocean deliver a sinister rock-flavoured track in Zindagi Se Darte Ho, another quintessentially Indian Ocean track characterized by strong vocals and the acoustic guitar cameos in between all the rock. After that brief respite, Mehngai Dayain is back to the village all over again, Ram Sampath doing the composing this time. And he gets the feel absolutely right having Raghuvir Yadav lamenting about price rise with a very crude-sounding chorus behind him. You could as well be sitting at a village gathering as you listen to this one, the feel is so real! In the remix Ram presents a totally different form of the song though the base tune remains the same. An entertaining remix this.
While I am not very hopeful of the music making waves at the box office, the composers have wonderfully conveyed the flavour of the movie through their music, which is job well done for a movie like Peepli Live.