Uttam`s score is evocative but not resonant. The composer harks back to the sarson ke khet and makki di roti ambience that one would expect in a film located in the heart of Punjab. But there is precious little here (with the emphasis on little rather than precious) that we haven`t already heard in, say, Anu Malik`s Sohni Mahiwal.

Uttam cannibalises bits of Rahman`s TAAL in the four-version Ud ja kale kawan. The bits taken from Rahman are all there`s to "crow" about in the Kawan song. There is a traveller`s special entitled Main nikla gaddi leke, where Udit Narayan tries to do for Sunny Deol what Rafi did for Dharmendra in the song Main jat yamla pagla deewana 25 years ago.

But it is more than a generation gap that divides Sunny Deol from Dharmendra, Udit Narayan from Mohammed Rafi and Uttam Singh from Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Given the robust Punjabi milieu of Gadar, we can`t help wondering what wonders Laxmikant-Pyarelal would have worked with the theme.

Uttam Singh`s daughter Preeti Uttam, who was once singled out by Rajesh Roshan as the single-most promising female vocalist of his generation, does a high-pitched Hum juda ho gaye (passably) and a faintly heart-rending judaai song Musafir jaane waale (moderately well), both with Udit, and a solo Traditional shaadi geet (unremarkably).

The one welcome happening in the album is that Udit Narayan sings uniformly from the first to last track for Sunny Deol while the female vocalists keep changing.