InDepth

The Research Starts....                                         The O P Nayyar’s style of music has been a topic of research for many young musicians and music directors. I must say that his school of music could not expand much though. The reason for this is simply the fact that it was so magnanimous and affluent that it was impossible to emulate it by any new music composer. Let us try to make a list of some of his greatest compositions which are also my personal favorites. 1  “Hai duniya usiki zamana usika, mohabbat mein jo ho gaya ho kisika” – A song from the movie “ Kashmir Ki Kali ” penned by S H Bihari and on the screen it was the pained lover boy, Shammi Kapoor. The saxophone is played by father of Ismail Darbar ( the noted music director of Devdas, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam ) and sung passionately by the great Rafi-sahab. When I say passion, I cannot find a more suitable ...

The Becoming Of a Phenomenon                                                           So, what made O P Nayyar a phenomenon within the film industry? Well, first of all, one could hardly argue to the fact that he was a natural musical talent. Having heard Nayyar-sahab sing “ Dil ki Awaaz bhi sun ” in a TV program, one could easily clear any doubt about it! One can just imagine how accurately he would have presented his songs to his singers! He was extremely hard-working who used to work on his orchestration tirelessly to get it picture-perfect before finalizing a song. He was very hard task-master and a perfectionist to the core. All notes, all bits of the melody and all throw of words on the beats had to be to the point before approving a song. He did not think much about stars and big banners - he worked tirelessly for attaining quality i...

The tripartite force - and it was a force indeed!                                                                                     The Asha-Nayyar-Rafi combination was supremely successful starting from the mid 50’s up to the end of the 60’s. It is to be noted here that before Asha Bhonsle came along, O P Nayyar used to collaborate frequently with Shamshad Begum and Geeta Dutt for majority of his songs. The fact that Asha Bhonsle developed a style different from Lataji was good for her career; however, she still sounded similar to Geeta Dutt. Even the two had similar voice tinge. As an avid listener, I think there was a fine difference between the two voices. While Geeta Dutt was a little too aggressive in the throw of words, Ashaji was more soothing. Here, I must say that ...