New Delhi: American popstar Nick Jonas says Indian music has opened up his mind. A recent video posted on the Zach Sang Show’s Instagram account featured the singer and songwriter gushing about the Hindi film industry’s use of music. But he seems to have confused the Indian subcontinent with Southeast Asia.
“The thing I love about Hindi music—music from Southeast Asia—is that a lot of the times, the music comes from a film,” Jonas said. He went on to explain that Bollywood actors lip-sync to songs recorded by playback singers.
“There’s these composers who know how to make these songs sound like big exciting hits, but that work really well cinematically. That’s something so inspiring to me,” he added.
It’s a different craft, but not one completely alien to him. Jonas recalled writing music for TV shows such as Camp Rock (2008). He pointed out that the big difference between Hindi film music and its Western counterpart is that Bollywood doesn’t abide by any restrictions of narrative.
“What I like about these scenes in Indian films is that they’re not always directly tied to a narrative string in the movie. It can just be an item song, just a big exciting moment in the theatres… It becomes a real celebration,” the singer said.
The comments were overflowing with love from Indians. “Our Jiju for a reason,” wrote Anuja Nikam. Others called Jonas “jamai babu”.
“He is absolutely right!.. Indian music is most beautiful and deep in scale and variety. Classical music and dances and all forms of arts are mind blowing,” wrote Shreya Patel.
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Varanasi
During the interview, Jonas brought up his wife, Priyanka Chopra and her upcoming film Varanasi.
“There’s some great movies on the horizon, Priyanka’s shooting one for the last 14 months, on and off… It’s a South Indian film by Rajamouli, who directed RRR… it’s going to be incredible,” he said.
Jonas himself has an upcoming release, Power Ballad, in which he stars opposite Paul Rudd. The singer is also set to begin his concert tour, ‘A Night With Nick’, on 4 June in New York.