God’s own man
DEEPA GANESH
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Even after singing for over six decades Manna Dey has not stopped evaluating himself. I weep listening to Rafi, says the 91-year-old musician, winner of the Dada Saheb Phalke award
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Photos: Bhagya Prakash K. and Murali Kumar K.
REVIEW Manna Dey: ‘I could have never sung what Rafi, or Kishore or anybody else sang. It would have been incomplete.’
Before we settled down to a particular time and place, the 91-year-old musician of glorious songs, Manna Dey had worried about the distance that I have to travel, what time of the day was safe for me to undertake the long journey, if it was better we met at a convenient mid-point... among other things. Finally, somewhat convinced, the gracious singer who was recently conferred the Dada Saheb Phalke award said: “I will wait for you. Please come.” He was waiting: the door of his house was kept open, and he was sitting right there, engrossed in listening to music on his discman.
Manna Da, as he is fondly called by one and all, waited for many moments in his musical career. “I was always a struggler. My uncle, K.C. Dey, the great blind musician of Bengal, had told me: ‘Don’t desire for what you do not deserve’, and that became the doctrine of my life. I never went around asking for anything. Whatever has come my way, I have taken it,” says the stoic musician, remembering the early days of his career. He endured many a hardship, but you cannot find even a hint of bitterness in him.
Manna Da’s parents wanted him to become a lawyer; but he didn’t endorse those views. His pursuit of music was so pious that he was determined to become a musician. “I found myself thinking and worrying about music all the time. If I had not succeeded in music, I had decided to join an ashram, but I wasn’t going to be a lawyer…Nothing but music touched me,” he recalls.
K.C. Dey was a great student of music himself. He could sing all genres — dhrupad, dhamar, thumri, khayal, ghazal and bhajan and to perfect his diction, he went to Urdu and Hindi teachers. His blindness was never a setback and he was a big name in Bengal of those years. “Since he was blind, I was expected to write down everything that he sang which in itself was such a big learning experience. The training was so intense that everything my uncle learnt from the great masters, I learnt too. So when I landed in the Hindi film industry, nobody could fault me on my diction. They realised very soon that they could rely on me to sing songs with heavy Urdu diction more than anybody else.”
Manna Da’s great musicianship is there for the world to see in the extraordinary songs he sang in his career that has spanned over six decades. But does scholarship alone make one’s music? Music is what you are and music lies beyond its own self, existing largely in the singer’s persona. It is indeed a matter of immense largesse that Manna Da refusing to sit alone on this pinnacle of success, extends it to all his contemporaries – Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar, and Talat Mehmood. For him, the award is also a moment of deep introspection, evaluating himself against all his fellow singers. Hence, when you ask him if he deserved better, he at once says, “No!”
Manna Da who went through great hardship and humiliation in his early years, says with poise: “During my time, when I was a full-fledged playback artiste, they were other great singers too. Have we had a better singer than Rafi? What about Kishore… oh what a voice! I had the prowess of a singer. But I surely didn’t have Kishore’s voice nor did I have Rafi’s style. If I had sung any song that Kishore, Rafi or someone else sang, there would be something less in it, it would be incomplete. I think they had their own style that in itself was class.”
Manna Da had a great fondness for Rafi. Even now, when he thinks of him, his face lights up with the warmth of friendship. But as that moment advances it becomes poignant. Manna Da turns emotional as he remembers the great songs Rafi sang. “How could a musically illiterate man sing like that?! His style was so infectious and influential, that even I have tried to learn his style. Many times after a song was composed, I have whispered the notation in his ears. He had no clue about the swaras. But look what he produced! Even now, I listen to Rafi when I am alone… and can’t help weeping… He was god’s own man…,” says an emotional Manna Da.
Full of stories and anecdotes, listening to Manna Da can also be a miniscule study of the Hindi film industry. But his mind, so overwhelmed by the music of his times, drags him back to music, musicians and nothing else. He remembers how when he had to sing “Ye Dosti” or “Ek Chatur Naar” with Kishore, he was a bundle of trepidation. Already an established singer by then, Manna Da was scared that he would lose his heart to his co-singer’s voice and wouldn’t be able to sing his parts. “I sailed through...,” he laughs.
There were people who stood by Manna Da and gave him his due. The pioneering Anil Biswas, the exceptional Shankar Jaikishan and the outstanding Raj Kapoor. “I had rehearsed for ‘Ye raat bhigi bhigi’ with Lata and the producer didn’t want me to sing it. Raj Kapoor put his foot down and said, ‘It’s not fair, we have rehearsed the song with him and he will sing it.’ He was not to relent. Finally, the producer had to come round.” When it came to ethics, not even the producers could shake Raj Kapoor. “Producers are not gods,” he would say.
There was also a time when the composer wanted Manna Da to sing, but he had literally fled the studios. “When Shankar asked me to sing with Bhimsen Joshi in Basant Bahar, I flatly refused and left for home immediately. I told my wife and she too insisted I sing the song. I thought about it the whole day and the following morning asked Shankar if they would give me a month’s time to rehearse. I was hoping he would say no. But he had a meeting with the producer-director and they agreed.” After a month’s rigorous riyaz, Manna Da turned up at the studios. One flourish from Bhimsen Joshi and his throat was parched. “I mustered all my courage and sang. After the recording, Joshi saab hugged me and said, ‘Kya sur lagaya aapne!’ My classical music training has always stood me in good stead.”
According to Manna Da, the singer’s bit is the least in the making of a good song. “When the song takes birth, there is no singer in mind. The artiste comes much later into the creative process. What composers we’ve had. I salute them. I have only been a good student of music, they did the rest,” he explains emphatically. “If I’m asked to say what my contribution is -- I never forgot I was singing an Indian song,” Manna Da says, as he walks me up to the gate and makes sure I have no problem getting back.
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