Tollywood films gained from King of Bling’s Midas touch

KOLKATA: While the nation echoes his ‘Ooo la la’ and rides high on his disco wave, Bengal will forever hum the melodious ‘Chirodini tumi je amar’ in fond remembrance of Bappi Lahiri.
The music director-turned-singer, who passed aaway some 2,051km from his birthplace in Kolkata on Wednesday, remains one of the strongest musical presences, having composed for over 70 Bengali films and scored the background music for 35.

Bappi’s tryst with Bengal began with ‘Dadu’ (1969). If Kishore Kumar’s ‘Aami ekjon shanto sishto’, ‘Ei toh jibon’, ‘Nari choritro bejaye jotil’ from ‘Ogo Bodhu Sundari’ (1981) were superhits, so were his duet with Kishore for ‘E amar gurudakshina’ from ‘Gurudakshina’ (1987) and Asha Bhonsle’s ‘Jogi Jogi’ from ‘Urbashi’ (1986).
The Prosenjit Chatterjee-Bappi Lahiri combination has innumerable hits since their ‘Amar Sangi’ days. That was when he sang ‘Tomar mukhta ki sundar, ami bolboi bolbo’ with Asha Bhonsle. “Even in 2012, he sang ‘Dhin tak tak cheeta cheeta for me for ‘Bikram Singha: The Lion Is Back’. All my Hindi films including ‘Aandhiyan’ and ‘Veertaa’ had him as the music director. More than anything else, he was my relative. He was such a caring person and left behind a treasure trove of creations. His acceptance abroad is unbelievable. He has done work of international standards in our commercial cinema,” Prosenjit said.
Apart from directors like Anjan Chowdhury, Dinen Gupta, Srikanta Guhathakurta, Ujjwal Chatterjee, Prabhat Roy got him to score for a dozen films. His family ties with the Lahiris were strong. “I was assisting Shakti Samanta when they stayed at the Lovely Guest House in Santa Cruz. I remember taking a young Bappi to meet the likes of Shakti Samanta and Promod Chakravorty,” he remembered.
Roy’s directorial debut ‘Pratidan’ (1983) had Bappi as the music director. “Though he was already scoring tunes with Western influences in Bollywood, I knew he would do justice to this number. Even Apareshda agreed with me. Bappi got in touch with Lataji to sing ‘Mongal dweep jele’ that was filmed on Sharmila Tagore,” he said.
Gauriprasanna Mazumdar had written the first four lines of the song on the cigarette packet. “Lataji had refused to take her remuneration for this song. Bappi himself had also recorded the same prayer song that was filmed on Naseeruddin Shah too. He directed music for a dozen of my films, including ‘Lathi’, ‘Pratikar’, ‘Pratik’, ‘Pranami Tomae’ and ‘Anutap’, among others,” Roy added. The last time they met was for Hangover (2010). “His son, Bappa, scored for my film. But Bappi was always there during the recording,” he said.
In 2008-2009, Ashoke Viswanathan directed a mainstream spectacular action drama titled ‘Sesh Sanghat’. It was unlike his earlier experimental and edgy films and Ashoke got in touch with Bappi to score six songs for the film starring Jackie Shroff and Jaya Prada. “He was a misunderstood talent. As a complete outsider to the Mumbai mainstream, I wanted to experiment with him. Shyamalesh Ghosh and I had written the lyrics. He had the clout to get in well-known singers, including Sunidhi Chauhan and Kumar Sanu. He also sang a baul song himself.”
In recent years, mainstream contemporary Bengali cinema didn’t offer too many assignments to Bappi. Did contemporary Tollywood largely underestimate the musical mind of this 69-year-old? “Baba loved Bappida’s melodies and made great use of his talent in ‘Lal Darja’. Even M.I.A had a huge hit with ‘Jimmy’ a cover of ‘Disco Dancer’s ‘Jimmy Jimmy aaja aaja’. I feel Bengal didn’t know how to utilize his quirks in music in recent years. It’s sad that more lampoons, and not songs, were made with him in Bengal recently,” Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s daughter and music director Alokananda Dasgupta. “Maybe, people thought he might be too expensive as a music director. He was expensive but would do a package deal that included his fees and studio and get singers through his contacts. Some mistakenly believed that he wasn’t sensitive enough. But that’s untrue. Not just music, he had even produced ‘Lal Darja’!” Ashoke added. Jeet Gannguli, who had got him to sing the title track for Mithun Chakraborty-starrer ‘Le Halua Le’ (2012), said, “I feel Bappida was a greater singer than a composer. Perhaps, there wasn’t any scope to utilize his talent here in Bengal.”