Chances are even if a generation has not heard of RD Burman... it has heard his music in some form. As a jingle, as a background music track in a young film, as a remixed song. With time, he is getting younger and more relevant though the last years of his life were scarred by professional setbacks. He died unsung before the biggest triumph of his life but yet there is no trace of tragedy in his music. Remember the signature background track of Ra.One? That sums up the influence he still has on contemporary musicians. In Pancham Unmixed: Mujhe Chalte Jaana Hai, a film on RD by Brahamanand S Siingh, music director and film maker Vishal Bhardwaj recalls how tough it is for him to shut RD Burman out of his mind when he is composing. Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy talk about the way RD’s notes slip into certain songs unbidden. His music is the vital sound of life, of hope, where rainbows, raindrops, rivers and sunlight, even trains and wine glasses sing joyously. And there is at least one RD song for every emotion.
I remember once writing that the biggest gift he had as a musician was to bring inanimate things to life. Be it a rumbling train (Dhanno Ki Ankhon Mein in Kitaab), raindrops on a tin roof (Rimjhim Rimjhim in 1942- A Love Story), a cloud (Phir Se Aiyyo in Namkeen), a lamp lit evening (Khali Haath Shaam Aayi in Ijazat) or a boat travelling through the night (O Majhi Re in Khushboo). His music was atmospheric. It evoked places we have never been to, moods and feelings and dreams. He was one of the few musicians in India who understood the power of effective background music in cinema and used a masterful tabla player like Pandit Samta Prasad to animate the tonga chase sequence in Sholay. He created a signature tune for Gabbar Singh by blowing into empty beer bottles. And Sholay’s theme music created with a gentle guitar can stand up against the signature tunes of any great cowboy western. He was possibly the first Indian musician to compose Bond style title tracks (Shaan, Shalimar) and a love theme (Shalimar, Sagar). And what a range the man had. He could pull off the bubbly innocence of Love Story, the classical gravitas of Amar Prem and the confident pop of Yaadon Ki Baraat without missing a beat. He had an instinctive understanding of lyrics and of singers. He nourished both and went on to tie freeform verse into melodies we sing and remember till date.
In an age when Hindi film music was formulaic, RD listened to world music, to western classical music, club music and more. Teesri Manzil’s music in the ’60s has jazz and rock ‘n’ roll influences and also the sweep and splendour of a Broadway musical. In his lifetime he recorded a best-selling international album Pantera, Bangla songs that run into the thousands and changed the face of Hindi film music forever. And yet in the last decade of his life, success abandoned him. Not because his music failed but because the films he gave some of his best music to did. Filmmakers with the exception of Gulzar, Ramesh Behl, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Nasir Hussain refused to work with him. A few days after finishing the score of 1942-A Love Story, he died on January 4, 1994. And yet it is like he was never gone. He is reborn every day in our memories because as Javed Akhtar said, the true measure of an artist’s greatness is that death does not diminish him but increases the resonance of his work. June 27 is his birthday and his music plays on.
(Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight, editor of unboxedwriters.com and an RJ.)