I love Rahman. But I am still trying to guess what was there in the song Jai ho that the world is suddenly setting it up on fire. Anyway, I love Rahman for the hundreds of really great songs he has given us and I’m happy that he is getting recognition. And so is India, in a different way.
Well, that is anyway not the topic I want to talk about. The topic is that while Rahman was receiving Grammy awards, I was doing something that told me a lot more about Indian music. As I was reading Ganesh Anantharaman’s book Bollywood Melodies where he has written about Hindi film Industry’s music and the people who made it.
In the past 3-4 days, I finished the first section of the book which writes quite at length about music composers, the ones who composed for many movies from 1931 to present. The book divides the composers into four generations. The first generation, called ‘The Pioneers’ comprises of Pankaj Mullick, Khemchand Prakash, Anil Biswas and Naushad, of whom I knew about just one, Naushad. And while I had heard the songs of Khemchand Prakash, I did not know who had composed them. Maybe you have heard his compositions too. I am talking of the person who composed Aayega aanewala for Mahal.
The second generation, that is called ‘The Masters’, has C Ramchandra (bholi soorat dil ke khote, mere piya gaye Rangoon, Eena meena deeka), Shankar Jaikishan, SD Burman, Madan Mohan, OP Nayyar (Naya Daur, Howrah Bridge, Kashmir ki Kali), Salil Choudhary (Anand), Roshan (Hritik’s grandpa, composer of Barsaat ki Raat, dil jo na keh saka, laaga chunri mein daag), Ravi (chalo ek baar phir se ajnabi ban jaayen hum dono, aaage bhi jaane na tu), Jaidev (allah tero naam, kabhi khud pe kabhi haalaat pe), Vasant Desai (ae malik tere bande hum) in it.
The third generation comprises of Kayanji Anandji, RD Burman, Laxmikant Pyarelal, Khayyam and Ravindra Jain. While the fourth generation is the one starting in ’80s, Bappi, Rajesh Roshan, Rahman, Anand-Milind, Nadeem-Shravan, Anu Malik and Jatin-Lalit. The book dedicates half a page to the twenty first century composers too.
Frankly, what I got from the book can not be explained here, but surely I got to know about a number of songs I had only heard about or worse, had not even heard about. Now I am searching for those songs from wherever possible and trying to listen to them. Today was the day of Baiju Bawra and interestingly, I was listening to the same song while giving project interviews that I was asked about in my placement interview. O duniya ke rakhwale.
PS: The book also counts Rahman as ‘The Last Titan of the Twentieth Century’.
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