Hey MP Peeps! What do you think about The Future Of Remixing for the West Indian community? What direction do you see the industry going? Is there any room left for innovation? Have today's remixers become lazy? (No Shade lol) Have all the talented remixers left the trade? What do y'all think? Coming from the days of Acid Planet Dj's (which most youths don't know about here lol) Dj's/Remixers were so creative. Seems like the craft is dying off. There's a general lack of creativity, same old tassa beats and everyone's using the Ah Kahi Door beat LOL (just search Ah Kahin Door Beat in youtube and see what happens lmao). Seems like since VP Premier, Mr. Stylistic, NMS, Caribbean Spice and the other pioneers of the trade left, there's has been a visible void. Well, I guess all good things have to come to an end.. just my 2 cents. Not here to offend anyone or throw shade.
I think the main issue is the recycling of beats being used, so people are being lazy (not everyone). I think the style of remixing that DJs do is dead (sampling for the most part). Maybe if we produced more than sample there would progression in my opinion.
I'd like to say that the answer is both yes and no. Before anyone gets offended, this is just what I think is what is actually going on, not to be an attack at anyone. To just focus on Indian CDs from my personal experience, I think the problem here isn't that remixers have become lazy, but simply because of what new music is coming out of Bollywood. There's only so many times people can remix the same old songs over and over, and going out to explore songs that aren't as mainstream is sometimes not a guarantee. One can find a rare song and mix it with great creativity, but the song itself won't generate any hype just simply because people don't know it and aren't ready to expand their personal library. Also, newer indian music comes in two forms now, it's either really slow and sentimental, but to the point where it's borderline depressing to listen to compared to sentimental music of the past (for example the 90s, a song like Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin is a slow and romantic song, yet it's mixable but listen to the new version of Dheere Dheere Se Meri Zindagi, it just doesn't flow with the current trend of remixing style). Or you get high upbeat songs that are already consisting of the typical kick snare heavy pattern that remixers are always using, along with Bollywood's own remixes of older songs that are on a whole new level of music. The industry is going into more electronic style music while the west indian community is accustomed to putting chutney style beats over the songs, you can put the two together and decide if that flows, hence a new ideology of creativity needs to be developed. As for the yes side of things, I don't want to say it's bad or make anyone misunderstand what I'm saying pointing out anyone specifically, but on a broad spectrum, there are some cases where some remixers are simply mixing because it's trendy. They wait for someone to create something and then try to recreate the same thing with minor changes and call it their own. And as stated by others, a lot of loops and customs are recycled over and over. Then there are those that simply wait to criticize others just for the sake of it, making the remixing scene toxic and hard for the genuine people to put out their work. On the other hand, there are many guys out there that are very kind and genuinely helpful, I can say from my personal experience that those guys do exist because many have given me great advice and constructive criticism. As for the pioneers, I just think that they've moved onto bigger and better things. While still creating music, they've found new ways to channel their creativity and moved on from the typical chutney beat style of mixing. They're still available for feedback and advice so it's not like they've completely fallen off the scene. This is just my opinion of how the remixing scene has become.
wow..Mahendra, that was a great perspective of the scene. I appreciated and agree mostly. Just wanted to add, if you look just most of the entries on this site..most are soca and we all have to admit its mostly bad music. Even the stuff being generated in Soca, the Trini stuff is just bad..there's no substance. Remixing started a long time ago with Indian DJ's, and then Carribbean DJ's jumped in and made it for our people...but there was no elevation after that.. so we've all reached the apex of the scene. To the point where we are now recylcing remixing CD's into new CDs and calling greatest hits. Just my opinion.
I predicted this years ago. As for the new music being released, either you move with the times or you fade away into non existence. There's only so much oldies out there to remix. If singers in our community would step up and sing original music in the style we want rather than sing back someone elses music then they could create their own market for that type of music and keep that style alive but this is where we're at right now.
I would say since megaupload shutdown numerous loops and instrumentals that were recycled over and over again, were lost after it was shut down by the FBI. However, there is still much room for innovation and creativity. You need to come up with new ideas and stop doing the same songs with repeated loops over and over again. Take for example how "Massivflo" using the aa kahin door riddim on that song after Stylistic mixed that on Starlite. Its either we reuse some of these loops or create new ones and make something nicer than before. People only want cds because of the beats and if we keep using the same ones it will kill the remixing scene. I feel like new beats need to be made and people need to come up with new ideas. The future of remixing lies in beat production
Absolutely. For EX: Back then you HAD to learn how to beat map songs, especially indian which was the hardest. Took some of us a year to fully master that. We had to manually chop up songs... Now they have all these high tech programs. That does it for you lol
