On Raj Kapoor’s centenary, a look at his amazing music: "You just cannot uproot music from Indian life"

A rarer-than-the-rarest human being and an extraordinarily versatile artiste, Raj Kapoor could—and often did—pick up the harmonium and compose a tune on the spot. Most RK admirers believe he was such an extraordinary artiste because he was a musician by nature. His music sense was so sharpened, he could sniff out ragas and identify them by name even without prompting from academic sources.

RK played a huge hand in the music of his cinema. The music of his cinema always carried a distinctive stamp. From the time he directed his first film Aag in 1948, RK began to collect a team of like-minded musicians – sound recordist Allauddin, lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri, composers Shankar and Jaikishan, singers Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar. These musical geniuses formed the core group of what came to be known as the RK style of musicianship. Distinctive, dynamic and unforgettable and unbeatable. Raj Kapoor simply stumbled onto hits, and the hits tumbled out of his repertoire willynilly.

RK reminisced fondly about his musical background in Calcutta. He once said, “As a fat chubby child, I would always be there in the studio with my father. Later when we came back to Bombay, Papaji put me in Narayan Rao Vyas’s Academy Of Music where I learnt classical music for three years.”

That’s when RK imbibed a musical heritage which afforded the illustrious musical scores of not just the R.K. Films but also RK starrers. Even when RK wasn’t in the filmmaker’s chair, his contribution to the songs and music of his starrers went much beyond a mere cursory interest as a professional. Songs in his starrers like Aashiq, Kanhaiya and Chhalia were immediately identifiable as ‘RK products’.

Music was within RK. He was an assistant with composer Anil Biswas for some time. Once when he was a clapper boy at Bombay Talkies studio (RK even gave the clap for Dilip Kumar in Jwar Bhata), he was fired from his job for a week for being away in a music hall during working hours.

Some years before his death on June 2 ,1988, RK spoke about the importance of music to the fabric of his films: “From Barsaat onwards, my music is an integral part of the fabric. Film is one means of entertainment which reaches to millions in this poor developing country… And music being an inherent part of our cultural life, you just cannot uproot music from Indian life.”

Even in Jagte Raho, RK included songs as an afterthought. And what fabulous songs Salil Chowdhary created for the film. Who can forget Motilal sauntering drunkenly through the steeets singing ‘Zindagi khwab hai’? Or Nargis suddenly appearing at the last minute like a goddess from heaven to offer the thirsty Raj Kapoor water with Lata Mangeshkar’s ‘Jago mohan pyare’ swimming on her tender lips?

Music was always woven into RK’s stories. If he ever felt the plot’s movement to be impeded by a song, he simply cut it off.  Said RK, “For me music is very important because it’s within me.” Songs sometimes came to him in a jiffy. At other times the process of creating a complete song took time. For Bobby’s chartbuster ‘Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho’ everything was ready. But RK found something to be missing. Until he appended the rider, ‘Socho kabhi aisa ho to kya ho’ to the playful love song.

To Raj Kapoor songs were a natural extension of the characters’ emotions. When words failed, they sang. For ‘Bhawre ne khilaya phool’ in Prem Rog, RK wanted a location with thousands of flowers. He flew the entire unit to Holland among the tulip gardens.

To those who objected to his passionate excesses RK protested, “Music from time immemorial has played an important part in our commercial cinema. People of this country like to sing songs. What’s wrong with that?”

Nothing to do with song could ever be wrong for RK. In Kolkata, a young RK learnt to speak Bangla fluently. RK faced the camera for the first time as a child in Kolkata in 1935 when he was directed by Debaki Bose in the film Inquilaab, which starred his father Prithviraj, along with Durga Khote and K.C. Dey. Much later in RK’s life, K.C. Dey’s nephew Manna Dey sang some of RKs most memorable hits in Chori Chori and Shri 420.

In Kolkata’s New Theatre, RK’s music sense became immeasurably sharpened when he came into contact with singers and composers like K.L. Saigal, Kanan Devi and Pankaj Mullick. In Mumbai, RK became clapper-boy and assistant to filmmaker Kidar Sharma who gave RK his first break as a hero in Neel Kamal. In it, RK played the sculptor Madhushudhan who falls in love with two lovely ladies Madhubala and Begum Para.

RK spent the rest of his career falling in love….with love. This love for love showed in his songs which were always intensely passionate and emotional. Take the film Bawre Nain. The heightened expressionism of Mukesh’s singing in ‘Teri duniya mein dil lagta nahin’ was further expanded by Raj Kapoor’s passionate portrayal of heartbreak. He was very good at conveying lost love. And the songs that came with the grief were always outstanding. ‘Hum tujhse mohabbat karke sanam rotey bhi rahe hanste bhi rahe’ in Aawara, ‘Aaja re ab mera dil pukara’ in Aah, ‘Aansoon bhari hain yeh jeevan ki raahein’ in Parvarish, ‘Mujhe tumse kuch bhi na chahiye’ in Kanhaiya and ‘Mere toote huye dil’ se in Chhalia were melodious cries of heartbreak which Mukesh sang with romantic resonance for Raj Kapoor.

Warmth was the key to RK’s art and life. He exuded unfathomable warmth in person and on screen even when he was intoning those sad and ponderable moments of life in Mukesh’s sober tones. Take ‘Aansoon bhari hai yeh jeevan ki raahen’ from the RK-Mala Sinha starrer Parvarish. It put the stamp on Mukesh’s career as the best disciple of K.L. Saigal.

Mukesh is crucial and all-pervasive. RK always referred to his constant ghost voice as his soul. He first saw Mukesh at Ranjit Studios on the sets of Jayant Desai’s Bansri. RK was very fond of recalling this encounter with Mukesh. He was an assistant and a junior artiste in Bansri, when one day he saw a fair, thin and handsome young man sitting on the sets playing the piano and humming to himself. RK was introduced to the singer as Prithviraj Kapoor’s son, and they became friends instantly. RK insisted on calling him ‘Mukesh Chand’. Their friendship cemented. When RK became a leading man in Kidar Sharma’s Neel Kamal, Mukesh was asked to do the playback. When RK launched his first feature film Aag as director Mukesh was there to lend his voice to the actor.

The song ‘Zinda hoon is terah gham-e-zindagi nahin’ from Aag became a pioneering achievement. Aptly it opens this magnificent ode to the Showman’s musical reservoir. After Aag when RK launched Barsaat, composers Shankar-Jaikishan and singer Lata Mangeshkar joined RK and Mukesh. An unmatchable music-making team thus came into being. The endless music sittings in the RK cottage on his farm in the outskirts of Mumbai yielded some of the most memorable Hindi films songs we’ve ever hummed.

Unforgettable music is associated with Raj Kapoor not just in his dual capacities as director and producer, but also as an actor. His vast storehouse of ghost-voiced screen melodies virtually screamed their excellence into the charts and hearts of humanity without seeming to strain at the seams.

A lot of the music and songs for, by and through Raj Kapoor are historically relevant to any serious evaluation of film music in Hindi cinema. Often Raj Kapoor would be asked by friends why he didn’t turn into an official music composer. “I don’t want to kick at the stomach of professional singers,” he would reply, before returning to the harmonium for another ‘O basanti pawan pagal’ or ‘Hum tujhse mohabbat karke sanam’.

In Mehboob’s Andaz, RK’s trademark ghost voice of Mukesh was given over to Dilip Kumar while Raj Kapoor sang only one song, and that too in Mohammed Rafi’s voice. The number? A duet with Lataji ‘Yun to aapas mein bigadte hain khwafa hote hain’ sung in blithe-spirited splendor.

Though we identify RK with the music of the lovelorn heart, there was no dearth of blithe celebrations of life’s quirks and foibles in the songs that RK sang on screen. Take the jaunty ‘Awaara hoon’. The anthem- like paces of this forward-march song brought joy and sunshine into two continents. Breaking all cultural and geopolitical barriers, the song along with the film, became a rage in the USSR as well as India.

From ‘Zinda hoon iss terah’ in 1948 in Aag to Meri zindagi mujhpe roye in Khan Dost in 1976, Raj Kapoor continuously ‘sang’ imperishable songs about love and life. As an actor and a filmmaker he saw music to be an integral part of the Indian psyche.

Son Randhir Kapoor once recalled how his father booked Ravindra Jain to do the music for Ram Teri Ganga Maili after hearing the composer singing ‘Ek radha ek meera’ at a function in Delhi. The song finally made it to screen in Raj Kapoor’s Mata Saraswati Lata Mangeshkar’s golden voice. The last song that was recorded during RK’s lifetime was ‘Chitthiye’ in Henna, aptly in the voice of Lata Mangeshkar. It was a memorable recording where RK showed his showmanship to full advantage. RK’s journey from Aag to Henna is a dreamscape of musical glory.

Also Read: From father Prithviraj Kapoor to brother-in-law Prem Chopra: Raj Kapoor’s ‘professional’ associations with his family

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