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Digging deep for gold
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A vintage music lovers' meet in the city was a revelation for those whose idea of golden oldies does not go beyond Mukesh
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PHIR BHI RAHENGE NISHANIYAN... RMIMers have kept vintage Hindi film music alive with fierce passion and commitment
It was during his stay in a small town in Switzerland that Shailendra Diwan stumbled upon Taj Ahmed Khan, a forgotten Indian music composer of the '50s and '60s. "It was late in the night and his music was playing. It drew me like a magnet!"
From then till now, Shailendra has done all that's humanly possible to collect Taj Ahmed's recordings and information on him. And he sounded completely smitten as he talked about the composer to a small gathering and played his geets and ghazals sung by Talat Mehmood and Mohammed Rafi. "You should listen to these songs during late evening. The mood creation is just terrific! I don't know why this composer was never given his due."
Passionate bunch
Shailendra may come across as a bit of an oddball to folks who find nirvana in their daily dose of television soaps. But such high passion was business as usual for the 30-odd people gathered around him. Members of the usernet group rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM for short), they are a bunch consumed by love for vintage Hindi film music. They have evolved into an offline group as well over a period of time and been meeting regularly in the U.S. since 1996.
This year, two long-time RMIMers (as they call themselves), Ashok Dhareshwar and Chetan Vinchhi, had brought the meet to Bangalore, attended by members from all over India and some as far away as Dubai and Santiago.
The meet didn't set out with a neatly worked out agenda, but the beauty of it was how even the so-called random talk there refused to veer off the topic of vintage music. As Shailendra played a ghazal by Shakeel Badayuni, Abhay Phadnis from Chennai interjected to point out how cleverly the lyricist had woven his signature "Shakeel" into the compositions. With some help from his sister Manjiri Dhamankar who had come from Pune, he could reel out several examples from memory.
Someone else wanted to know if Taj Ahmed had composed songs for Begum Akhtar and pat came the answer from a fellow RMIMer: "Besides her own compositions, she sang only for Khayyam and Murli Manohar Swaroop." And if you ask who Swaroop is, you are simply not in the RMIM league.
In fact, the RMIM meet was quite a revelation to those whose idea of golden oldies starts with Mukesh and Rafi. RMIMers dig as deep as late '30s and '40s for unadulterated gold and talk about Rajkumari, Noor Jehan, K.L. Saigal and Pankaj Mallick with a familiarity that would make you wonder if they wake up with them every morning.
No wonder then that RMIMers' biggest apprehension about the quiz conducted by Farishta channel of WorldSpace at the meet was whether they would have to suffer Nadeem-Shravan tunes. Imagine that in a group where even the mention of Lakshmikanth Pyarelal is blasphemy! "If you play them, there will be no more shravan," one warned.
But when Sheetal Iyer got started with the quiz (after a generous dose of pep talk on the channel), even hardcore RMIMers admitted that the young team had done their homework. The first part in which they had to identify composers for a set of six medleys of songs was a sitter. (It came with interesting sidelights such as Ashok's comment on how the best compositions of the first medley's composer were actually done by the composer of the second!) Part II of the quiz was pretty tough, even seasoned RMIMers conceded. The prize, a WorldSpace set, was won by Chiranjeevi Singh, former Additional Chief Secretary of Karnataka, who had made a guest appearance.
More visibility
Chetan says the Bangalore meet has lent what was once a "niche activity" a greater sense of community. He hopes the group would be able to do some concrete work such as pitching in with archivist Hamraaz (an RMIMer himself) to consolidate his mammoth compilation of Hindi film music.
In the meanwhile, RMIMers are also already thinking about their next meeting destination to continue their conversation on how Lata Mangeshkar's style evolved over the decades or finish that unfinished argument on whether Rafi sounds "forced" (as Ashok would say) or "buland" (as Shailendra would insist) in Taj Ahmed's compositions.
You can reach RMIM by logging onto rec.music.indian.misc on Google groups.
BAGESHREE S.
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