Magician of melodies: Madan Mohan turns 100

Brijeshwar Singh

Every aspiring singer still wants to sing his songs. Contemporary music directors from Pritam to MM Kreem to AR Rahman study his moody melodies. Shreya Ghoshal says that if a singer wants to learn when to be loud or soft and how to end a line, then hear Lata Mangeshkar singing Madan Mohan’s compositions. We are celebrating his birth centenary this year.

In an era when most music directors were traditional musicians, the immaculate English-speaking Madan Mohan was an oddity. He was handsome enough to be a filmstar and a good singer. He was an ex-Army officer with little formal musical training. His father was a movie magnate, Rai Bahadur Chunnilal, founder of Bombay Talkies and Filmistan, who cut him off when he left the Army. Madan Mohan worked in All India Radio for three years. He then struggled, sleeping hungry on Bombay’s footpaths, as a chorus singer.

HIS BEST OF BEST

LATA MANGESHKAR

1 ‘Jaane kyun’ (Veer-Zaara, 2004). Immortal music.

2 ‘Aaj socha to aansoo bhar aaye’ (‘Hanste Zakham’, 1973). Lata wept during this recording; Bhupinder Singh’s guitar is memorable.

3 ‘Maai ree, main kaase kahun’ (‘Dastak’, 1970). Madan Mohan depicts a nightmare in this song. Lata captures suppressed emotions.

4 ‘Nainon mein badra chhaye’ (‘Mera Saya’, 1964). Lata creates her own aalap in Raga Bhimpalasi to bring in the mood of romantic intoxication.

5 ‘Kadar jaane na’ (‘Bhai Bhai’, 1956). Begum Akhtar loved this song; not many singers have been able to handle this quick-shifting melody.

MOHD RAFI

6 ‘Main nigahein tere chehre se’ (‘Aap Ki Parchhaiyan’, 1964). Supriya Chowdhury and Dharmendra are a love-stuck pair but the song brings out the strength of their bond.

7 ‘Main yeh soch kar’ (‘Haqeeqat’, 1964). Rafi conveys the difficulty of family life in the armed forces while Pyarelal plays a plaintive violin piece.

8 ‘Ek haseen shaam ko’ (‘Dulhan Ek Raat Ki’, 1967). Rafi illustrates Madan Mohan’s westernised style.

ASHA BHOSLE

9 ‘Saba se yeh keh do’ (‘Bank Manager’, 1959). Madan Mohan gets Asha to sing ghazals too.

TALAT MAHMOOD

10 ‘Teri aankh ke aansoo pee jaoon’ (‘Jahan Ara’, 1964). Only Talat could’ve handled the lyrics so poetically.

When his first film as a music director (‘Aankhen’, 1950) was a success, his father reconciled, but soon passed away. In fact, Madan Mohan had the worst of both worlds. He was regarded with suspicion by the traditional musicians who thought he was an upstart; and movie producers noted that his father never supported him.

After leaving the Army, he joined AIR-Lucknow and this was his real music school. He absorbed the art of great singers like Ustad Faiyaz Khan and light classical greats like Begum Akhtar. He stated that if you had a good ear, you didn’t need formal musical training.

In 1948, he sang a duet with Lata which was dropped from the film ‘Shaheed’. But he asked her to tie a rakhi and treat him as a brother. Lata was to reserve her best singing for Madan Bhaiyya!

Madan Mohan loved Urdu and enjoyed working with poets like Rajendra Krishan, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Sahir Ludhianvi. A singer himself, he could write melodies which offered scope for improvisation. Bhupinder Singh (whom he introduced as a singer) described how Madan Mohan would try improvisation on almost every note he composed. But then he would give only the bare melody, the lyrics and the song situation to the singer and let them work out their own expressions.

This was the old Lucknawi style of light music. A basic composition or bandish offered the maximum scope for improvisation while respecting the raga. Many listeners responded to this. Till about 1964, this was his typical style. Highly trained singers like Lata, Talat Mahmood and Mohd Rafi were suited for this. For his lighter songs, which were not raga-based but more akin to western music, Madan Mohan used singers like Mukesh, Kishore Kumar and Geeta Dutt. The versatile Asha Bhosle sang both serious and light songs. In 1956, his idol Begum Akhtar complimented Lata on the ‘Bhai Bhai’ song ‘Kadar jaane na’! Unfortunately, many of his films flopped, and if a film had a short run, the songs remained unknown. AIR, too, had banned film music till 1957.

Madan Mohan, however, took steps to stay in the market. In the late 1950s, he trimmed down his orchestra to a small number but of high quality. This slimmed-down orchestra was widely popular. It became known as the Madan Mohan orchestra. In 1957, when AIR launched Vividh Bharati, radio programmers found that Madan Mohan songs were among the most requested. His sad ghazals became fixtures of evening and night programming. There was a new category of fans who had never seen his films.

Tastes changed in the ’60s and from about 1964, Madan Mohan became lighter, more experimental and more westernised. That year brought him eight films. His major effort was ‘Jahan Ara’, a costume drama with Talat’s ghazals, but it ran for only four days. Despite this, its songs became radio hits and have remained popular. His major successes were ‘Woh Kaun Thi?’, a mystery film, and ‘Haqeeqat’, a film on the India-China war of 1962.

Two of Lata’s solos in ‘Woh Kaun Thi?’ were mega hits: ‘Naina barse’ and ‘Lag ja gale’. ‘Haqeeqat’ had a haunting Lata solo in ‘Zara si aahat’ and the patriotic group qawwali ‘Hoke majboor mujhe’; both are perennially popular. The radio carried Madan Mohan’s music to the highest in the land. When Asha Bhosle was introduced to Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister said she knew Asha as the singer of ‘Jhumka gira re’, a Madan Mohan hit from ‘Mera Saaya’. And when the ‘Naunihal’ producer went to get Indira Gandhi’s permission to use shots of Nehru’s funeral, Indira began weeping on hearing ‘Meri awaaz suno’. ‘Dastak’ (1970) fetched him a National Award, but not much work.

He died in 1975, but some of the films that he composed for released later, like ‘Laila Majnu’ (1976); ‘Veer-Zaara’ was a hit in the 21st century! While radio helped him tide over commercial flops in his lifetime, it was the audio cassette which immortalised him. Anuradha Paudwal did a popular cassette of his songs and then, in the 1980s, every taxi driver seemed to have a cassette of pirated cover versions!

The devotion shown by the music industry has perpetuated his memory. Every aspiring singer has tried to master the quick inflections that Lata, Rafi and Talat used. Every music composer has wondered at his long melodies. And this is true of South India too! The great composer Ilayaraja was playing a guitar for him when Madan Mohan told him he was too good to be an instrumentalist and should become a composer. Each new generation has found solace in his music and each new music director discovered lessons to be learned. A true immortal!

— The writer is former Director-General, All India Radio