R. D. Burman

Rahul Dev Burman was born on June 27, 1939, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then part of British India ^[1]. His father was Sachin Dev Burman, already a respected singer and composer of Bengali music who would soon become one of the most admired music directors in Bombay cinema. His mother, Meera Dev Burman, was a lyricist who wrote for several of her husband's songs. The family traced its roots to the royal house of Tripura, a lineage S. D. Burman carried lightly but never entirely left behind ^[2].

The boy picked up the nickname Pancham early, and several explanations circulate: one story holds that he cried in five distinct tones as an infant, another that the actor Ashok Kumar heard him repeating the fifth note of the scale ^[1]. Whatever its origin, the name stuck for life, and admirers still call him Pancham da.

He spent much of his childhood in Calcutta with his grandparents while his father built a career in Bombay. Formal training came from serious teachers: he studied sarod with Ali Akbar Khan and tabla with Samta Prasad, and he learned harmonica well enough to perform on his father's recordings as a teenager ^[2]. By his own account he composed his first tunes as a schoolboy, and two of them, later used in the films Funtoosh (1956) and Pyaasa (1957), were absorbed into his father's scores ^[3].

Burman moved to Bombay and served a long apprenticeship as his father's assistant, working on scores such as Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi (1958) and Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) ^[3]. The arrangement gave him daily access to the best session musicians in the industry and a close view of how a song traveled from sitting-room sketch to finished recording.

His first independent assignment came from the comedian and producer Mehmood, who signed him for Chhote Nawab (1961) after S. D. Burman declined the film ^[1]. The picture did modest business, but the score announced a new voice, and Mehmood remained a loyal patron. Burman also appeared briefly on screen in Mehmood's Bhoot Bangla (1965), one of his rare acting outings.

The breakthrough arrived with Teesri Manzil (1966), a Vijay Anand thriller starring Shammi Kapoor. Songs such as "Aaja Aaja Main Hoon Pyar Tera" and "O Haseena Zulfonwali" ran on driving Western rhythm sections that Hindi film music had rarely attempted, and the soundtrack made Burman a name producers sought out on his own terms ^[4]. Padosan (1968), another Mehmood production, confirmed his range with the comic classic "Ek Chatur Naar", a mock singing duel featuring Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey ^[3].

The 1970s belonged to him. Kati Patang (1970), Amar Prem (1972), Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973), and Aandhi (1975) showed he could write tender melody as convincingly as dance-floor energy, while Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) produced "Dum Maro Dum", a psychedelic number sung by Asha Bhosle that became one of the most recognizable recordings in Indian popular music ^[4]. Any list of R. D. Burman achievements has to reckon with sheer volume: he composed for more than 300 films across Hindi, Bengali, and other languages ^[1].

His partnership with Kishore Kumar defined the era's male voice, especially in films built around Rajesh Khanna, the reigning star of the early seventies. Sholay (1975) gave him "Mehbooba Mehbooba", which he sang himself in the rasping voice he reserved for special numbers, and the film's background score matched its epic scale ^[3]. He worked steadily with the lyricists Majrooh Sultanpuri, Anand Bakshi, and above all Gulzar, with whom he made some of his most literary songs for Aandhi, Ijaazat, and Masoom.

Burman was an inveterate experimenter in the studio. Colleagues recalled him rubbing sandpaper together, blowing across beer bottles, and recording rain to get textures no instrument supplied ^[2]. He absorbed rock and roll, bossa nova, jazz, and Nepali and Bengali folk idioms, yet the results always sounded like Hindi film songs rather than borrowed goods. He won the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director three times, for Sanam Teri Kasam (1982), Masoom (1983), and, after his death, 1942: A Love Story (1994) ^[5]. Among the more curious R. D. Burman facts is that he recorded an English-language funk album, Pantera, in 1987 with the Latin composer José Flores ^[6].

Burman married Rita Patel in 1966 after meeting her in Darjeeling; the marriage ended in divorce in 1971 ^[1]. The melancholy Kishore Kumar song "Musafir Hoon Yaaron" from Parichay is said to have been composed in a hotel room during the period after the separation.

In 1980 he married the singer Asha Bhosle, his closest musical collaborator for two decades ^[2]. Their professional relationship predated the marriage by many years and produced hundreds of recordings, from cabaret numbers such as "Piya Tu Ab To Aaja" to the spare, unornamented settings of Gulzar's poetry in Ijaazat (1987), including "Mera Kuchh Saamaan", which won Bhosle a National Film Award ^[5].

Away from the studio he was fond of cooking, motor racing, and the harmonica, and friends described a generous, restless man happiest surrounded by musicians at late-night sittings ^[2]. He had no children.

The second half of the 1980s treated him harshly. Musical fashion shifted toward composers such as Bappi Lahiri and, later, the duo Nadeem-Shravan, and a string of commercial failures led producers to drop him from projects, sometimes after work had begun ^[4]. Films like Ijaazat earned critical admiration without restoring his standing at the box office.

A heart attack in 1988 forced him to undergo bypass surgery in London the following year, and the work kept thinning ^[1]. Accounts from friends describe the period as one of real financial and emotional strain for a man who had once been the busiest composer in Bombay.

His final major assignment was Vidhu Vinod Chopra's 1942: A Love Story. Burman completed the songs, including "Kuchh Na Kaho" and "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha", but died of a heart attack in Bombay on January 4, 1994, months before the film's release ^[5]. The score was received as a return to his best form, and the posthumous Filmfare Award confirmed the judgment.

Death enlarged him. From the mid 1990s onward, remix producers, indie bands, and film composers returned constantly to his catalogue, and songs dismissed in his final years found new audiences on compact disc and then online ^[4]. Any serious R. D. Burman biography now doubles as a history of how Hindi film music modernized, since so many of the changes ran through his recording sessions.

Institutions followed the listeners. Filmfare instituted the R. D. Burman Award for New Music Talent in 1995, honoring young composers and singers in his name ^[5]. The 2011 film Rockstar carried a dedication to him, and Brahmanand Singh's documentary Pancham Unmixed: Mujhe Chalte Jaana Hai (2008) gathered testimony from colleagues and admirers ^[6]. In 2013 India Post issued a commemorative postage stamp on his 74th birth anniversary, and in 2016 a Google Doodle marked what would have been his 77th birthday ^[7].

Working composers cite him as a foundational influence, and musicians trained in his orchestras, among them the percussionist and composer duo of the era's session world, carried his methods forward. His songs remain fixtures of Indian radio, streaming playlists, wedding bands, and reality-show auditions, an afterlife few of his contemporaries can match ^[4].