India Abroad (03/Sep/1993) - Biswas, Now 80, Is Still in Tune

Details

• article: Biswas, Now 80, Is Still in Tune
• author(s): Suman Guha Mozumder
• newspaper: India Abroad (03/Sep/1993)
• keywords: "Que Sera, Sera" - by Doris Day, Alfred Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Article

Biswas, Now 80, Is Still in Tune

Biswas, now 80, is still in tune.

When he turned 80 on July 7, he said he could neither compose music nor hear it. For one regarded as a colossus among Hindi cinema composers for 60 years, Anil Biswas could well afford this banter.

Since the 1930s, when he changed Hindi cinema music by introducing the orchestra to it, Biswas has had an awesome career. He was the first film composer to complete 50 years of work.

But Biswas gas chosen not to sit on his laurels. In the late 1980s he produced a memorable signature score for India's first and most popular television soap opera, "Hum Log" ("We the People").

And today this enthusiastic musician has found another outlet for his talents. Realizing the paucity of available literature in Bengali on the ghazal tradition, he has written the first book on it in his native tongue.

And on Aug. 15 his score accompanied a new TV series, "Ek Desh, Ek Pran — Ekta" ("One Country, One Spirit — Unity").

Biswas began in 1935 with a Hindi movie, "Dharam ki Devi," and went to compose for about 75 films. Among the best known were "Kismet" (1943), "Anokha Pyar" (1948), "Arzoo" (1950), "Aaram" (1951) and "Tarana" (1951).

Critics say that "Tarana" was probably his best score.

The slightly built, alert Biswas is revered as the father of film music.

His orchestra-oriented film music brought a dramatic change from the practice of mapping the music in the classical or folk format. Known as "natya sangeet," Biswas's trend-setting orchestral liveliness accompanying the playback singer's voice has become an indelible norm, and successive music directors have resorted to it for audience appeal and musical excellence.

Any other film music director might have considered his life's mission complete with the runaway success of the orchestral introduction, but Biswas went on to compose music that ranged a gamut from early classical to the lighter-veined folk.

This resurgence of established music in a new mold gave his songs tremendous mass appeal as well as approving nods from purists and conservatives.

Despite his innovativeness, Biswas had to succumb occasionally to film makers' demands to copy scores from popular Hollywood movies. In the 1950s a producer asked him to copy the song, "Que Sera Sera," from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," for the movie "Jasoos."

Much against his wishes, Biswas agreed and created "Jeevan Hai Madhuban," sung by Talat Mehmood. But it was done with so much finesse that few could tell where the inspiration had come from.

When it came to singers who could immortalize these compositions, the film world had its answer in Biswas. Besides leading the whole concept of what is called film music, he had a knack for spotting young talent, who went on to became legends.

For instance, Begum Akhtar came to prominence in 1942 in the film "Roti," for which Biswas wrote the lyrics and composed the music. He spotted, nurtured and launched playback singers like Mukesh and Mehmood.

Even Lata Mangeshkar acknowledged his greatness by saying, "I learned from Anilda the two most important things of music singing career — the technique of breathing while singing without breaking the tempo, and how to use the vocal chords so that each word is clearly pronounced and easily understood by the listener."

For Mukesh, it was more than just musical training. It was a complete discovery, for that artist's meteoric rise was linked with "Dil Jalta Hai to Jalnedo," which he sang under unusual circumstances and for which Biswas was solely responsible.

Realizing that Mukesh had not arrived as scheduled to record that number, Biswas tracked him to his favorite haunt, brought him back, doused him and slapped him for being drunk.

The result: The song became steeped in poignancy and proved so popular that thereafter no Mukesh concert was complete without it as the signature.

By 1963 the Bombay film scene was full of Biswas hits, and it was time for him to move on. The Information and Broadcasting Ministry invited him to become director of All India Radio's National Orchestra.

Using Indian instruments, he gave the orchestra a "new sound," as director Basu Bhattacharya terms it, making a totally Indian symphony on the lines of the Western-style orchestra.