Excerpts from our meeting with Shantanu Moitra (SM)
SM: I have quite a few recordings of Burman-da in Bengali.
Question: Raw recordings?
SM: No, Studio recordings. But, many of them have not been made. He was very good with tappa, a form of Keertan, Many of SD Burman’s Hindi compositions are based on keertan. He was very much influenced by keertans. The brilliance of him was that though he adapted many of his songs to Hindi, the Hindi audience never could make out that they are Keertans, which is the genius of that man. But if you were to skip the arrangement, and just listen to the melody, you will know… ‘Phoolon ke rang se’ is a keertan. It’s a hardcore keertan.
SM sings Bangla song, ‘Borne Gondhe Chonde Geetite’.
“It is a tappa set. Tappa, tappa set.’
(SM sings along with theka.)
‘Barne gandhe chhonde geetite hridoy-e diechho dola’. It’s a keertan.
SM (continues excitedly)
Imagine, to take that traditional form, and put in a contemporary situation like this, with Dev Anand singing, ‘Phoolon ke rang se’. That’s is the genius of this guy! His influences were not… music kya hota hai ki hum kuch influences hote hain. We get influenced by the whole package, sound…
SM: He had the ability, to completely disassociate the influence, and just take that melody out, and add a new colour, add a new clothing to it, so that becomes something new. That’s very difficult to do as a creative person, as a composer. Bahut mushkil hai, bahut mushkil hai!
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