I had been shilly-shallying over this one for sometime now. It took the whole weekend and a day more for the music junkie to overthrow the indecisive pisces and reign supreme. Couple of things to be set straight, before we get started with the song itself. Firstly, I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that Rahman is not at his best with Raanjhana, BUT he is still better than the myriad of plagiarized buffoonery out there. Secondly, if you ask Elton John to compose a carnatic geetham, it'll produce no more than a fag end (no pun intended). Put approximately, that's what happened to other songs of Raanjhana soundtrack.
Free from the cliched "required by the script" and "regional touch" cacophony, I thought Rahman composed Piya Milenge, true to his self. It's easily the best track from this movie. Unlike Qun Faya Qun or Arziyaan this isn't meant to be a quintessential sufi composition. For the first minute we hear a small sargam libretto on synthesizer beats with Sukhwinder Singh's vocals rolling in. That's when the hook "tohe piya milenge" along with dholak, up the ante. And the next time we hear this hook, its a fusion of dholak with rock-like guitar distortions. The dextrous use of chorus has been Rahman's forte and he uses it this time to lend a qawwali feel to the scheme of things. Icing on this cake comes in around the fourth minute when the libretto is accompanied by violin. For me, these ten seconds of violin riff create that unalloyed Rahmanic rhapsody we started off with! (Check out the video below for this piece)
Ghoonghat ke pat khol re, Tohe piya milenge
The lines are borrowed from a Mira Bai bhajan, which was also once crooned by the legendary Geeta Dutt for the movie Jogan. That composition in raag darbari, still sounds as blissful as ever. And for true aficionados in you, I have included that video too. The song from Raanjhana uses these lines for the hook but the rest of poetic verses come from Irshad Kamil's pen. He switches from fecund Rockstar to fastidious Raanjhana effortlessly. My take, he is probably the only current generation urdu poets who could carry Gulzar's lineage ahead.
If the words are reflective, the vocals are robust. With Piya Milenge, Sukhwinder Singh strikes his sonorous best. For decades of his yeoman's service for bollywood, thankfully he still doesn't sound like that grand old uncle with never-say-die spirit :)
And as per our established ritual, here are the videos -
Watch out this space for more musings on recent music.
Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment