The Curse of Jhankar

Pop music became increasingly tech-oriented during the 1980s, with computer-based solutions taking centre stage over “traditional bands” playing “traditional instruments.” There was a growing emphasis on quirky new directions driven by the technology of synthesisers, sequencers, digital wizardry in the studio, vocoders, drum machines, and the daddy of them all — the synthetic drum, AKA the Syndrum. Pop music had to adapt and innovate, and there was a race to embrace the machine as the road forward to the cash counters.

By the beginning of the ’90s, there was a crescendo of horrific music on the world scene, with some of the most offensive songs imaginable dominating the mainstream — though thankfully there was a backlash in response as well. The ’90s were the era of Barbie Girl, “Boom Boom,” Whigfield, and all those horrors.

In South Asia, the songs of Boney M., Alisha Chinai, and Bappi Lahiri drove pop sensibilities. Electro arrived like a comet somewhere in the West and pushed our South Asian dinosaurs into an era where they risked extinction if they didn’t learn how to adapt. During the ’90s, some of India’s most revered and talented music directors found despair, failure, and dwindling work as brash, talentless wonderboys with their fingers on the pulse ruthlessly sidestepped them up the ladder.

Rather than the haunting silences of a Lata number from Khushboo, we had entered the age of screeching string sections and Shockabilly nightmares. They were stringing together ghastly goulashes of Caribbean lilts, Rockabilly pop, and Eurodance — the sort of music that thrives among discerning audiences in Ibiza on a muggy August night.

“Tarzan My Tarzan,      Aaja Dekhao Doon Tumhe Pyar Kaise Ho,”ho ho ho” — Tarzan became the anthem of the age, and deservedly so.

But just as pop music lurched from one shocker to another, deep dark thunder was lurking around the corner in the shape of something so odious, foul, and disgusting that it would turn an entire generation of listeners into brain-cell wasteland. All of this, unsurprisingly, arrived alongside the age of Ecstasy, raves, jungle, house, and other unthinkable abominations in pop-cultural history that we have somehow had to endure on our path to perfection. Even Prince forgot his own name in the interim.

In Pakistan, we had the enthusiastic Junoon and the bubblegum stylings of Vital Signs — one with its entitled-boy, whitewashed pretty-boy tosh for the well-heeled, and the other a bunch of lads tearing it up and occasionally stumbling upon an actual tune.

Then IT arrived insidiously.

It had been brewing ever since Biddu pumped out Aap Jaisa Koi with Nazia Hassan years earlier.

Still, IT was slow-cooking in its embryonic stage, requiring many mutations before finally arriving — like Ebola and Covid combined and spreading just as fast, soon conquering the world and changing the way we lived.

When Aashiqui arrived, along with the finest days of Kumar Sanu, we had plunged far beyond the depths. And then, one day, IT arrived and gripped the entire region in its entrancing brilliance.

IT was, of course, The Jhankar Mix.

A disease that still exists and never entirely goes away. Like the best viruses, it has found ways to mutate, hide, breed, and periodically re-emerge without ever being fully neutralised by any vaccine.

It returned last year like the worst sort of measles rash when Spotify was suddenly flooded with it. Hundreds of fine — and not-so-fine — soundtracks from the pre-Jhankar ’70s were reissued with the Jhankar treatment to appeal to those ’90s generations now stumbling headfirst into their midlife crises while hopefully recruiting a few new lost souls along the way.

Now the airwaves were ruled by the captivating beats of the electronic tabla and dhol. Ghastly screeching percussion lent new “vigour” to yesteryear’s gentle tunes and gave them terrifying new life.

The ’90s were also the era of the satellite dish in South Asia, blasting the region into all sorts of new directions. It was the age of Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin and the sound that film came to epitomise — all mid-tempo tunes or, as they say in desi lingo, “medium.”

The glorious charlatans Nadeem–Shravan churned out sickly sweet, meaningless nothings capable of wiping out brain cells with the force of an atomic wave. Nadeem, you may remember, remains an absconder in a murder case incidentally, while Bhais held sway over Mumbai — Dawood and Salman alike. Match-fixing was in the air, Pepsi had settled into India, and from coast to coast, madrassah to mosque to temple, there was simply no escaping Jhankar.

There wasn’t a single cabbie in South Asia who wouldn’t attempt to dazzle passengers with the sophistication and future-forward trendiness of some Jhankar. In Pakistan, it reached the point where anyone caught without Jhankar on their Walkman risked being treated as a has-been — as dead as Dodo Ji.

Even the uncles and aunties had been won over, first through a steady wave of Jagjit and Chitra middle-of-the-road waffle before being assaulted by the striding sounds of Bappi, Bappa, Reema, and company shouting “Everybody Dance With Pa Pa Pa, Everybody Dance With Ma Ma Ma” while the party set lost their collective minds.

Govinda was everywhere. Life was dance, and dance was life.

Jhankar beats became the sound of the era — they defined the era itself. In Pakistan, it was embraced across all sections of society and cut across every “class” and income group. Most of all, the nation’s drivers embraced the sound like few others. It became their caffeine, their cultural equaliser. Jhankar served as a tepid bridge across a musical landscape divided by elitism.

It wasn’t all awful, however, because Jhankar remixes did introduce the world of melody — albeit compromised by horrid drum programming and synth sounds — to a new generation raised on Barbie Girl, Bappi Lahiri, and Spice Girls. Younger audiences were introduced to the Burmans, Shankar–Jaikishan, Madan Mohan, and Kalyanji–Anandji, whose era was beginning to fade from memory.

In Pakistan, the preference for Jhankar grew so strong that it became the default. Suddenly, original non-Jhankar versions of songs became rarities and, in some cases, remain almost impossible to find.

Though it engulfed and devoured entire decades of music without sparing anyone, Jhankar will forever remain associated with the lukewarm mid-tempo drivel churned out by Nadeem Shravan, all depicted in pastel shades with young lovebirds cooing at each other in Kulu Manali — and, of course, endless nightmares of Kumar Sanu gurgling and crooning away in the most sickly fashion imaginable.

Eventually, the cracks began to show, and Jhankar’s shadow receded somewhat as Honey Singh-style music and rap took centre stage. Yet it never truly disappeared, always lingering somewhere around the corner.

Treacly, putrid, unsettling, and frequently woefully inappropriate, Jhankar was elevator music crossed with a pesky mosquito that simply refuses to die, returning repeatedly to suck at the lifeblood. Every now and then it takes a whack, staggers around punch-drunk for a while, then revives itself just enough to bite again.

There are entire lists online dedicated to “The Best Jhankar Songs of the Era,” naturally dominated by Kumar Sanu, Nadeem Shravan, and friends.

On this side of the border, Noor Jehan was enjoying a disco-era career revival — think “Disco Dildar Mera” — while an especially aggressive strain of Jhankar, powered by a fascinating variety of Syndrum sounds, led the charge.

Some evils, like VD, never quite disappear. They simply mutate, become more virulent, and wait patiently for the right moment to return. Same with Jhankar, Bhangra remixes, or Reggaeton.

You can bet a pretty penny that Hell has the stuff playing nonstop on loop.