Books

The Patriarch, The Prince, And A Meteor

Books on Saigal, R.D. Burman and A.R. Rahman replay much of our public soundtracks

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The Patriarch, The Prince, And A Meteor
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We decided right from the beginning, in 1931, that our films will be musicals. Music is in our blood. We sing when a child is born, we sing and dance at weddings and we chant as we carry someone to the cremation ground. Our first film with a sound track, Alam Ara, had seven songs. It did very well and the producers of the next two films overloaded them with songs. Shirin Farhad had 42 and Indra Sabha had 69. After that songs became an integral part of Indian cinema and a producer had to be brave to attempt a songless film. K.A. Abbas’s Munna (1954) and B.R. Chopra’s Kanoon (1960) were without songs. Once was more than enough for both these producers.

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The number of songs in films has come down. Today a producer is content with two or three. There was a time when composers like Naushad, C. Ramchandra and Shankar-Jaikishen were expected to come up with eight to ten songs for each film. Stories were often written after the songs were composed. Songs were shorter then, about three minutes. Anything longer would not fit on a 78 rpm gramophone record.

We have three books here that, taken together, show us how film music has evolved over 80 years. Pran Nevile tells you all you will ever need to know about K.L. Saigal, the legendary singer who could also act somewhat. His first film, Mohabbat ke Aansoo, was made a year after the introduction of sound. It is unlikely that a film made today would have ‘aansoo’ in its title. There was a time when every film had a sad song; it came somewhere towards the end when the girl loses the boy, or vice versa, before they are reunited again in the last reel. Songs of heartbreak and loss were Saigal’s speciality. They are best heard after a few drinks, preferably in the wee hours.

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Saigal grew up in Jammu and found fame in Calcutta at New Theatres. In a short span of nine years, he made 27 films for that studio before he was tempted away to Bombay, where he was less successful at Ranjit Movietone. His most successful film was Devdas (1935), adapted from the Saratchandra Chattopadhyay novel. This story of doomed love between a rich boy and a poor girl has been remade many times, in one form or other, but the original remains the benchmark to which actors and directors aspire. Saigal died when he was only 42. The author is too kind; he does not go into the cause of his death. It was alcohol that killed him.

Rahul Dev Burman also died relatively young, at 54. The gifted composer learnt his trade at the feet of his famous father, Sachin Dev Burman. There are some who go as far as to say that the son was a better composer than the father. I don’t buy that. RD was good but not that good.

But the younger Burman ushered in a new beat to film music. His approximation of a certain ‘rock’ sound captured the attention of college kids who, until then, looked at Hindi film music with disdain. He was a hugely successful composer in the ’70s, the flavour of the decade, but soon afterwards the muses abandoned him. The compositions became mediocre and films flopped. But at the very end of his life, he made an amazing comeback and showed producers what he was capable of. The score for 1942, A Love Story, released in 1994, is one of the greatest in Indian cinema.

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In the last of the three books, Rahman lets his hair down in his conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir. He tells us of his journey from humble beginnings to a world-renowned composer with two Oscars to his credit. He redefined film music more than RD, integrating traditional Indian rhythms with western sounds and orchestral arrangements.

Nevile and Kabir are seasoned writers. They have produced two fine biographies in their separate ways. Nothing less was expected of them. The surprise comes from the first-time authors of the third book. Anirudha Bhattacharjee is an IIT alumnus while Balaji Vittal works for a bank. They are unabashed admirers of RD, but who would have thought that someone of their background could come up with a biography so finely written, so clear-eyed and informative?

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