K.L. Saigal

Back in the early 1940s, when Khemchand Prakash scored the music for Ranjit Movietone?s magnum opus Tansen, he made Kundan Lal Saigal sing Diya jwalao jagmag jagmag. This captured the essence of the raga Dipak to some extent. As Dinesh Sharma was singing that number at G.D. Birla Sabhagar (March 27), the listeners were transported back to an era when the name of Saigal was enough to light up a thousand souls.

With an oeuvre of less than 200 songs and an audience insensitive to what rendition used to be seven decades ago, Saigal is nothing more than a relic now. His birth centenary came and went before we realised. The absolute nonchalance of Calcutta, the city that made him, stands testimony to it caring little for its musical ancestors.

Saigal Sangeet Sarita (SSS), a Gurgaon-based organisation solely devoted to the music of ?India?s first singing superstar?, presented an evening soaked in the nostalgia of good old New Theatres days when B.N. Sircar discovered star potential in a salesman of Remington typewriters in Calcutta.

To their advantage, each of the SSS singers is gifted with a baritone and a nasal twang that immediately recalls the inimitable Saigal timbre. Bhupinder Singh, for example, gave a fluent rendition of Main kya janoon kya jadoo hai (Zindagi), doing full justice to the crooked phrase inherent in the second ?kya?. His take on the playful coaxing and cajoling in Chhupo na from My Sister, Saigal?s last film with New Theatres, was even better. Octogenarian Ajit Singh excelled in Timirbaran?s improvisation on Mallar in Balam aye bason more man mein from Devdas, a film which made Saigal a household name.The fatalism that this image prompted was evident in Nainan Koshy?s short work of Karoon kya from Dushman.

It was Pankaj Kumar Mullick who composed many a gem for Saigal. Naushad, for once, surpassed Mullick in composing two marvellous numbers from Shahjahan, Gham diye mustaqil and Jab dil hi toot gaya. Sharma?s take on the latter was smart work. Eyebrows were raised when Bhupinder Singh and Koshy tried Bengali songs that Saigal rendered in films. Singh?s version of Jakhan raba na ami from Parichay (Pranab Roy / R.C. Boral) was a thing of beauty. Koshy signed off with Amaar raat pohalo, a Rabindrasangeet. Saigal was the first non-Bengali singer acknowledged by Tagore.