FILM AND MUSIC
His Master’s Ears Truly
When Satyajit Ray made Music do all the talking
Bimala treads nervously on the chequered floor, the lens focusing on her ‘alta’ laden foot as the background erupts in boisterous sitar stringing a very familiar tune: ‘Eki labonyo Purna Praney’.
The music in reference is titled’ Bimala out of Seclusion’ from the celluloid classic ‘Ghare Baire’ by Satyajit Ray.
A Tagore song, often sung in ‘Baithaki addas’ found its moment, creating a silent revolution.
Almost unannounced, it became the score of thousands of women trying to break free from their own shackles and an anthem for ‘Woman Emancipation.’
Such keen was the auditory world, the maestro inhabited, where he not only heard but visualised music.
A lonely wife and her void couldn’t have been better expressed than his use of another Tagore song ‘ Phule Phule Dhole Dhole’ and those infallible expressions by Madhabi Mukherjee in his favourite ‘Charulata’. A master’s stroke.
How can we forget the classic ‘ Feluda theme’ adapted from Mozart’s Symphony no 25 which has become our very own and still remains an icon in the history of ‘Theme Music’ in Indian Cinema?
We all are familiar with the songs Ray created for ‘Gupi Gayen Bagha Bayen’ and ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’, where he used Hindustani Classical Ragas to create simple yet mellifluous compositions, enchanting connoisseur and mass alike.
A special mention for his composition ‘Paye Pori Bagh Mama’ in a Gambhir’ raga, ‘Purabi’, importing the Carnatic style so effectively, thus creating that uncannily comical yet serious atmosphere, where we as audience sit on the fence whether to laugh or feel scared.
Ray’s use of Kishore Kumar, to sing Rabindra Sangeet in two of his movies, in two entirely different circumstances was interesting, as it underlined one common undertone: Serenading the Lady.
Though the maverick singer went ahead to sing a good few of Tagore numbers in years to follow,
‘ Ami Chini go chini Tomare’ from ‘ Charulata and
‘ Bidhir bandhan Katbe tumi’ from ‘ Ghare Baire’,
still bears the watermark of class and finesse which he himself hardly surpassed.
We, as kids were introduced to authentic Indian folk by Ray in his two Feluda installments of ‘Sonar Kella’ and ‘Joy Baba Felunath’.
‘Kotoi Rongo Dekhi Duniyae’ a masterpiece penned and composed by the Maestro and sung by the legendary Amar Pal, can easily be confused as a traditional Lalan Fakir number.
Ray’s understanding of music as a language of storytelling exploded in the cinema-scape with his experiments with Ravi Shankar in his much-acclaimed ‘Apu Trilogy.’
The strumming sitar when Apu and Durga see a train for the first time, or the disturbing tune which follows Apu, trying to find peace in his own small world, post-Aparna’s death, created that strong imageries of unspoken ecstasy and agony, not envisaged in this medium before.
A filmmaker, who stated in many of his interviews much later, that film as a subject can do without music, clearly created a vast space for this genre as an unnoticed instrument of story-telling, observed in the motion-world few and far between.
Thank You Somsubhra Banerjee , Priyanka Srivastava for giving me this opportunity.
