Remembering a Genius. Review on Music and Lyrics Movie

Majority of Indians know Salil Chowdhury, popular among his admirers and the music fraternity as Salil da, as one of the most versatile music composers. However, to me, he is an institution that has the integral capacity to continuously understand, innovate and thus recreate itself, in juxtaposition with, the synthesis of the instance of time and the temporality of musical expressions. Salil da’s music speaks more than just the notes. It permeates the artist's state of mind and the process of creativity in the most effortless of means. For any enthusiast of vintage-era Hindi film music , Salil da’s music was impossible to ignore.

There was something different that made each of his songs stand out. ‘Suhaana safar’ from Madhumati bowled me over, the first time I have heard it. The killer part of this song is when the chanting Mukesh emits a powerful ‘Hoho Ho’ in the 3rd interlude. ‘Aye Dil Kanhan Teri Mazil’, sung by Dwijen Mukherjee and Lata Mangeshkar was in the same league, except there was the additional harmony on Lata Mangeshkar’s part.  ‘Ah haa Rimjhim Ke Yeh Pyare Pyare’ by Talat Mehmood and Lata Mangeshkar was the same way and so was the classic ‘Jhir Jhir Jir Jhir Bhadwarwa Barshe’ between Hemanta Mukherjee and Lata Mangeshkar. All of these joie de vivre songs are in total contrast to the sober ‘Koi Hota Jisko Aapna’ from Mere Apne; in this the normally lively Kishore brings out passion in a totally different way. Then there is the set of songs with classical orchestration such as ‘Jaa Toose Nehi Bolun Kanahaiya’ or ‘O Sajnaa, Barkha Bahaar Aayi’.  ‘O Sajnaa’ is a tune with unexpected twists and turns, especially in the last stanza of the song. The use of the bass range of the sitar, multiple flutes in harmony, and the use of unornamented phrases in ‘Tere Hi Khwabon Mein, Kho Gaye’ and return to meerds in the last part of the word ‘Kho Gaye’, shows the touch of his sheer genius.

And I wasn't alone. The songs had overwhelmed different generations. When the songs of ‘Madhumati’, ‘Parakh” or ‘Anand’ used to be hummed from the radio, softness used to spread in the eyes of even my grandmother, who was generally averse to Hindi film songs. For a good many years, leading into my college life, I was not really aware of creator of such music and only knew them as Hemanta’s number or Lata’s number.

It was years later, when names began to matter, that I realised that Salil Choudhury was the man behind the music. The composer was a dreamer who could weave poetry and music in one composite drapery. Melody was his principal implement; often he'd write his own lyrics in Bengali, compose a tune and only then fit in someone else's lyrics even when sometimes it meant erasing his own. He himself had once said: “I want to create a style which shall transcend borders - a genre which is emphatic and polished, but never predictable”.

Salil da's love for western classical music started when he was a young boy growing up in the Assam tea gardens, where his father worked as a doctor. His father inherited a large number of western classical records and a gramophone from a departing Irishman. On the one hand, young Salil listened to Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Chopin more or less everyday and on the other hand his daily life was surrounded by the sound of the forest, twittering of the birds, music of the fountain, sounds of the flutes of adivasis and the local folk-music. Those had left a enduring impression in young Salil’s mind. He had become an excellent self-taught flute player and his favourite composer was Mozart. His compositions often used folk based melodies or melodies based on Indian classical ragas but the orchestration was very much western in its construction.

Salil da’s unique style is immediately identifiable. Even in cases of straight adaptations like ‘Itana Na Mujhse Tu Pyar Badha’ (Chaaya) harvested upon Mozart's 40th symphony or ‘Raaton Ke Saaye Ghane’ (Annadata) picked from Chopin, Salil da had let his influences shake their hands with his own Indian roots.