Guest article by Ashok M Vaishnav
(My first post of the current calendar year was a review of RD Burman’s biography by Anirudh Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal. In that review I had also mentioned that for me RD Burman was a post-1970 phenomena, which was beyond the time period I had set for this blog. I was not very up to date with music of this period, yet I had decided to celebrate the year as the year of RD Burman, as he came chronologically as the next great music director. I was quite open that I would need the support of guest writers in this endeavour.
Our perennial guest author Ashok M Vaishnav has taken up my request. He completed a nice series of articles on the Arrangers and Musicians last year. RD Burman was renowned for his creative rhythms and experiments with sound with different instruments. Continuing where he left off, Ashokji comes up with a nice article on RD Burman’s orchestration improvisations, focussing on his three key instrumentalists: Basu Chakravarty, Manohari Singh and Maruti Rao Keer. Thank you Ashokji for this worthy article to carry forward the tribute to RD Burman. – AK)
Being born to parents – Sachin Dev Burman and Meera Burman – it was natural that R D Burman had natural flair for music. As a very young boy he had penchant for the note Pa. As such, Ashok Kumar used to call him ‘Pancham’. Very soon, father S D Burman, recognising the musical inclination of the son, also rechristened Pancham as his nick name, from the earlier name Tablu as the parents used to call him. R D Burman used his nick name as his signature musical identity.
S D Burman had used R D’s tune for Aye meri topi palat ke aa (Funtoosh, 1956). S D Burman also used R D’s tune for Sar jo tera chakraye (Pyasa, 1957). R D used to attend music sessions at his father’s recordings, soon to join him as his assistant. All these experiences helped R D Burman to lend breadth and depth to his music and build a network of highly innovative musicians. The core of R D Burman’s music team was built on the foundation of triumvirate of his assistants, each one an ace instrumentalist: Basu Chakraborty – a cello player, Manohari Singh – a saxophone player and Maruti Rao Keer – rhythm specialist. It was this team that helped R D Burman to establish his unique identity by creating the music style that blended the essence classical, folk, regional and western music.