MUSICAL ‘GROUPISM’

The various decades have seen paradigm shifts in trends, tastes and work-ethics. Strangely enough, if you classify them under diverse criteria, each group consists of both talents from the oldies as well as the newer and newest names.

Take the supermarket composers. These are the chameleons in the game, changing their musical colors with every assignment. They can also be termed the ‘fluid’ music makers, for they can adapt to any shape and size of the musical vehicle they are placed in. Unlike speciality restaurants which serve the best pizza or biryani or dosa in town, they serve all of these items and more, and you do not have to go elsewhere for a particular need. Heading this hallowed and very restricted list are the titanic duos — Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Shanker-Jaikishan. Ranking very close are C. Ramachandra and Kalyanji-Anandji, and a little behind rank the Burmans, with son R. D. Burman averse to scoring period music (as in historicals, mythologicals and period costume fantasies). The under-rated Chitragupta also merits inclusion here. And if he can be less allergic to constructive criticism, more honest in his introspection and less complacent given the (absence of real) competition, Anu Malik is the only young composer who can join the fringes of this league.

Then we have those narrow-range specialists whose music - even when apparently inclusive of every kind of song - always seems to be strait-jacketed within certain parameters, sometimes stretching to monotonous extents within a certain time-frame. But within these ambit they deliver several popular or great songs to us - included in this list are Khayyam, Naushad, Ravi, O.P. Nayyar, Ravindra Jain and Nadeem Shravan.

We have those esoteric music makers who take a kind of perverse pleasure in being different (they call it being individualistic) even at the cost of their own music, popularity and reputation. Jaidev and Vishal Bharadwaj come into this category where the few triumphs are vastly outnumbered by the duds.

S. D. Burman, Naushad, Viju Shah and Ismail Darbar rank among the choosiest of composers. These are men who know that they can score only when they can work on a score with an approach all their own. They are not enamoured of pecuniary gains or of cornering the best banners. Of this lot, Viju shows signs of going a little haywire, while on the contrary Rajesh Roshan is all set to join these ranks after the response his music in Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai has deservingly got.

On the other hand, allowing for a varied amount of mediocre or half-hearted work, men like Laxmikant Pyarelal (480 films), Bappi Lahiri and R. D. Burman (around 300-plus each), Kalyanji-Anandji and Chitragupta (250 each), Anand-Milind and now Anu Malik have proved that they are capable of prolificity.

Then we have the composers who are hardcore and uncompromising traditionalists. The orthodox school includes men like S. N. Tripathi, Vasant Desai, Naushad, Roshan, Madan Mohan, Sajjad and Hridaynath Mangeshkar. Obviously the list cannot possibly include any composer working we do not merely have a Rahman from the ’90s or a Bappi Lahiri or a R. D. Burman. Among the rebel composers of their time were O. P. Nayyar and S. D. Burman. We also cannot forget here the men who shaped the distinct identity and pluralism of Hindi film music - men like R. C. Boral, Timir Baran, Anil Biswas, Khemchand Prakash, Shanker-Jaikishan and even the enigmatic Salil Choudhury and C. Ramachandra.

The branded ace plagiarists were R. D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri, Anu Malik, Rajesh Roshan and Anand-Milind. But the ‘sly’ reworkers’ list includes every possible junior and senior composer in the industry!
A whole cavalcade of them exercised their vocal chords, like Anil Biswas and S. D. Burman who began as singers outside their own baton, C. Ramachandra, Chitragupta, Ravi, Madan Mohan, Usha Khanna, Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri, Rajesh Roshan, Ravindra Jain, Lalit, A. R. Rehman, M. M. Kreem, Aadesh Shrivastava and of course Kishore Kumar and Hemant Kumar. Prem Dhawan, Ravindra Jain and Anand Raaj were as much lyricists as they were music directors, though Anu Malik, Raam-Laxman, Rajesh Roshan and Vishal have also tried their hand at writing songs. Naushad, S. N. Tripath, Hemant Kumar, Salil Choudhury, Himesh Reshammiya, Bappi Lahiri and R. D. Burman and Hridaynath Mangeshkar have been involved in other departments of films, like production, direction, acting and writing.

Kanu Roy, Vanraj Bhatia, Ajit Verman and Shaarang Dev were always branded as art-film music directors, while with few exceptions, names like N. Datta, Usha Khanna, Sonik-Omi, Sapan-Jagmohan and even Raam-Laxman could not break through the B-grade images. Chitragupta and Laxmikant-Pyarelal finally broke through, but S. N. Tripathi wasn’t that lucky.

As against the few complete composers like Laxmikant-Pyarelal (heading the list by a wide margin), A. R. Rehman and Viju Shah, we had the self-confessed music men who were totally untrained - like O. P. Nayyar, Nadeem-Shravan, Raam-Laxman and Anand Raaj Anand.
Finally, mention must be made of those very few composers who were obsessed with their lyricists - Naushad (Shakeel Badayuni), Shanker-Jaikishan (Hasrat Jaipuri and Shailendra) and Nadeem-Shravan (Sameer).

Rajiv Vijayakar