Golden Age of Hindi Film Music...In Ten Episodes

When did Pancham's youthful exuberance start expressing itself through his music? Was it from his first movie or did he pick it up along the way? He had certainly shown glimpses of it before, but I think it was with the 1973 film, 'Yaadon Ki Baaraat', that he went totally "yahoo". The energy and the verve of his melodies, which is what his fans relish about him even to this day, reached another level after scoring for this Nasir Husain classic. It is not like he was a straight jacket before this. After all, he had made Shammi Kapoor reach ecstatic states with 'Aaja aaja' and 'O haseena zulfon wali' in 'Teesri Manzil'. That was in 1966. With  Asha Bhosle's crooning and Helen's hip-shaking (and men's heart skipping),  he started a new genre in Hindi film music, after the raunchy 'Piya tu ab tu aaja'. With 'Yeh diwani yeh jawani', ‘Chala jaata hoon’ and the like, he made Kishoreda go zanier than before (and that is ...

I am going to finish off this series with two lovely songs from Rahul Dev Burman or RD Burman or RDB; the shining star of the seventies, the scion of the Burmans, inheritor of musical riches, the original Rock Star of Indian music...Call him all the names you like.  Pancham  - another of his names that stuck to him from childhood, apparently because he cried precisely in the fifth note (Pa) or because he wept in five notes -  was born with the proverbial silver spoon (and audava raga swarams, if you get my drift) in his mouth. That is often, reason  enough  to bog one down for a lifetime of entitlement and perpetual submediocrity. People born to overachieving parents either lack the talent or the drive to bear the weight of public expectations. Or both. (Cough...Abhi...cough..shek..cough...Bach...cough...chan). Pancham not only rose against the onerous gravity of being SD Burman's son but went a step further and established himself as the undisputed trendsetter ...