S. D Burman The World of His Music by Khagesh Dev Burman

Author:Khagesh Dev Burman [Burman, Khagesh Dev]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788129130426
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2015-10-11T21:00:00+00:00

From then on my father started grooming me. He taught me how to mould a song to the satisfaction of a producer or a director. For instance, if someone narrates a ‘situation’, you are to immediately compose a tune to suit it, and today, after having done it for 25 years, it’s become a habit. If the situation is bad, you have to come up with the best you can. Of course, you can try suggesting a change in the situation but you don’t always succeed.

Another thing my father inculcated in me was never to be overexcited about what I composed. He had a habit of composing the mukhda and passing on the antara to his two assistants (Jaidev Verma, Surit Kaur) and me. A sort of healthy competition prevailed while we tried to outdo each other.

My father would choose the best and sometimes I scored too. If I felt happy about it, he’d snub me and call the servant and ask his opinion. The moral of this was: simple is beautiful. While composing, he used to say, we can get carried away and add a bit of everything which finally makes it less appealing.

He also advocated introducing new sounds. The producer or director may not immediately take to it but a novel idea can click in a big way. When a situation was narrated to him, my father would visualize it and even dance it out. In the song ‘Chhod do aanchal’ (Paying Guest) by just adding that ‘Aah’ at the beginning he changed the whole complexion of the song. He explained that’s how a girl will react when the hero teased her.

An important tip I leant from my father was picking up cues. When you heard a bird chirp and started humming, you thought of a particular aspect of life. You had the situation and the tune that went with it. When I told him that I sometimes dreamt tunes, he asked me to immediately get up and hum it into a tape recorder or jot down the notations. The next morning, he said, you can improvise on it. The tunes of ‘Kanchi re kanchi re’ (Hare rama Hare Krishna), ‘Tum bin jaoon kahan’ (Pyaar Ka Mausam) and ‘Duniya mein logon ko’ (Apna Desh) have all come to me in my dreams. (Filmfare, June 16-30, 1984)

The teachings of S. D. Burman had immensely benefited Rahul. RD’s entry into Bollywood saw a revolution in the way music was composed here. RD is credited with injecting a fresh style and technique into Hindi songs. Rahul completely revolutionized Bollywood’s music and later on brought Bollywood onto the world map.

Now let me come back to 1961. During his illness, all the producers and directors left SD. Let me quote Rahul in this context:

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