The Singer of a Timeless Song - by M
R.D. Burman: The Singer of a Timeless Song - By M. Asif Alvi, Jan 18, 2010 1 R.D. Burman: The Singer of a Timeless Song By M. Asif Alvi It was a song to remember. A strong beat of a Nepali drum suddenly burst onto my aural plane followed by heady notes of a bass guitar and subtle hints of an accordion, and then a full- throated voice bordering on the baritone made a grand entrance. Actually, the song „Mehbooba mehbooba‟ (Sholay, 1975) was so stunning in its overall structure and the singer R.D. Burman (Pancham) sang it so heartily well that it gave me goose bumps right when I first listened to it. Forget the drum, forget the guitar, and forget the accordion. No interplay of any musical instruments and no wizardry of any compositional arrangements could have contributed anything to Pancham‟s own energetic entry as a singer into the song‟s sumptuous scheme of things. In fact, in those mid-1970s boyhood days, when I was busy exploring various playback singers of Hindi cinema and getting used to their carefully cultivated charm, Pancham‟s voice in the legendary song from Sholay nearly jolted me out of my comfort zone. I remember I literally sat up and took notice. The voice sounded different, full, catchy, and, above all, trained. Soon I discovered that everybody else in my family and neighborhood loved it too. The film went on to become a blockbuster hit for a thousand reasons, and this song was one of them. But, as a boy I kept wondering why Pancham sang a song in the film.
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