They’ve roped in AI to make Kishore Kumar sing Saiyaara (it is not a part of the official soundtrack). He hasn’t been around for 38 years, but is still breaking the Internet.
Back to the OG. Every Kishore fan has a playlist for every mood — sad, happy, peppy, funny, romantic, sizzling, unhinged.... Picking one favourite is plain presumptuous.
Maybe one could listen to an underrated gem of his that has a story to tell. Jab bhi koi kangna bole from the 1982 bold comedy Shaukeen has music by R.D. Burman and lyrics by Yogesh. In a land where the elderly are venerated for being wise and sexless, director Basu Chatterjee made a movie on three old buddies who are neither. Shocking for that time.
Kishore’s Jab bhi koi kangna bole nails the mood of the film. Risque but not risky. Kishore’s unique baritone makes it sensual, not cheap. Like in every song, Kishore owns the lyrics with his expressions and inflexions.
R.D. had borrowed this number from his legendary dad S.D. Burman’s number, Nitol paye rinik jhinik, in Bengali. Dad Sachin composed and sung it, mom Meera wrote the lyrics. If the Bengali version is cute and folksy, the Hindi one is adult and urban.
And yet, Pancham throws in a surprise in the second interlude — the unmistakable strains of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gramchhara oi rangamatir poth. Both father and son have doffed their hat to Tagore’s music many times — to stunning results.
Yogesh’s lyrics walk the tightrope between nudge-wink knowing and deep insight into manhood.
Jab bhi koi kangna bole
Payel chhanak jaye
Soyi soyi dil ki dhadkan
Sulag sulag jaye....
And this line that says it all: Jeevan se yeh ras ka bandhan toda nahi jaye.
Just the way Kishore sings every “jaye” is pure gold.
Born on August 4, 1929, Kishore would have been 96 had he been alive, and knowing him, yodelling away to glory. He was only 58 when the mic dropped on October 13, 1987.
A superstar’s maverick brother, Kishore got his first break as a playback singer at 19, for the Dev Anand starrer Ziddi (1948), thanks to composer Khemchand Prakash. The boy had sur, but sounded like a hoarse K.L. Saigal.
It took some years before he found his signature style. We lost our hearts forever.
