Musically, we are in unusually turbulent times. Browsing in record stores, you encounter a teeming mass of genres, hybrid forms and lots of styles. New sounds are multiplying in crazy confusion fending off and feeding off one another. The Fifth of Beethoven goes disco, while Schubert's ``Unfinished'' Symphony serves as interlude in the edgy White-boy rap of Beck.

The New York Times music critic John Rockwell calls it ``stylistic cross-pollinisation'' -- the single-most important development in popular music. No wonder Bob Dylan issinging for the Pope, and making serious money by playing at black-tie corporate dos. Woody Guthrie is a stamp in the US, while son Arlo sings his songs at Roosevelt House, the US Ambassador's residence in New Delhi.

Someone said long ago: The times they are a changing. How much has it changed for music lovers in India. The advent of MTV and Channel V was manna from heaven. Or was it? Hitherto relegated to appearances in hotels and restaurants, performers finally saw light. Overnight, youngsters surfaced as singers, as musicians and together they began belting out what has come to be known as ``Indi-pop''. Essentially, synthetic, repetitive, mediocre music flashily packaged and promoted.

So when the rest of the world is busy splintering genres, what has music television done for India? True it provided that much needed platform, but to whom, and how? We all know that today's culturally empowered is the Generation-X -- those teenagers and twenty-somethings whose taste dominates the market; who are, in thewords of a critic, ``refreshingly muddled and their mode of listening restless.'' So instead of reflecting this vibrant, energetic hall of sound, what are MTV & Channel V doing here?

They are reinforcing the stereotype, maintaining status quo. Doing her mandatory chest exercises, a Raveena Tandon pants out that same bass-boosting rap; and hours later, the same song is featured in ``slow remix version''. Bollywood feeds most of music television programming.

When Bob Dylan showed up with a bunch of rock musicians behind him, he got booed, and the booing didn't stop until his songs like Desolation Row and Like A Rolling Stone pierced the consciousness of a whole new generation, making everyone realise that rock music can be as direct, as personal and as vital as a novel or a poem. That popular music can be expression as well as recreation. Music television in India wants us to stick to recreation, ignore expression.

Agreed, talent is a much abused word these days. But we do have lots of it. In the '70s,Calcutta threw up the likes of Dilip Balakrishnan, and groups like ``Nagar Philomel'' and ``Mohiner Ghoraguli''. Look further and the Northeast will surprise us with musicians who sing about bomb blasts, crowded buses and the roadside dhaba. Songs of comment, and yes, expression.

Not just music, it's the same story in every other art from. Hope floats if you can do a Daler Mahendi or Spice Girls, try originality and you're a no no. More so in India. That's why MTV can get away by rolling snazzily edited clips of a street child ferrying tea, packaging it as hip 'n cool. And Channel V gets all its laughs from Udham Singh and Quickgun Murugan with heavy regional accents. Try doing the same in the US, try making fun of Hispanics and their accent on The Grind, or showing Black women as perpetually pregnant, Black men as shooting each other or peddling dope.

For music television, being hip in the West means giving a voice to those on the fringes. In Asia, however, hip means child labour and a street vendorrooting for Madonna. And we thought it was only about music.