The music fades away

Noted music director Ravi, who was ailing and in hospital for some time, passed away on Wednesday due to cardiac arrest. He was 86. Simplicity defined the style of this composer whose songs Lata Mangeshkar had once aptly defined as “sweet and straight from the heart”. Indeed, with few instruments he could belt out mellifluous hits such as Aye meri zohara jabeen (Waqt), Baar baar dekho (China Town) and Chaudhvin ka chand ho (Chaudhvin Ka Chand). Untrained in classical music, Ravi borrowed liberally from North India’s folk music forms such as biraha, bhajan, doha and heer, which he had heard back in Delhi as a child. Milti hai zindagi mein mohabbat kabhi kabhi, the Ankhein ghazal is only one of his many compositions said to be patterned on a Punjabi folk number. His favourite Raag Pahari resonated in his compositions, whether it was Neele gagan ke tale (Humraaz), In hawaaon mein (Gumraah) or Neel gagan par udate badal (Khandan). Ravi was briefly Hemant Kumar’s assistant when the latter did the Filmistan classic Anandmath in the early 1950s. He was also one of the back-up vocalists in the film, especially in Vande mataram, the superhit song. He might have pursued his singing career, had film-maker Devendra Goel not signed him on as music director for Vachan (1955). Ravi, on his part, realised that with heavyweights such as Mohammad Rafi, Talat Mahmood and Mukesh bursting the charts, his chances of making it big as a singer were slender. He went on to become a well-known composer, and like his low-profile compatriots Chitragupta and S N Tripathi, held his own against stars such as C Ramchandra, Naushad, O P Nayyar, S D Burman and Shankar-Jaikishan. Ravi came into his own under the BR Films banner. He scored music for major B R Chopra films such as Gumrah, Waqt, Humraz, Aadmi Aur Insaan, Dhund and Nikah among others, handling with utmost care the delicate Urdu lyrics penned by Sahir Ludhianvi. The duo formed a formidable alliance for Chopra’s films. Aye meri zohra jabeen, loosely based on an Arabic number, and Aage bhi jaane na tu, the oomph-oozing Asha Bhosale ditty, contributed immensely to the box-office success of Waqt. The composer won two Filmfare awards for Gharana and Khandan in the 1960s (Lata Mageshkar got a Filmfare Best Singer trophy for Tumhi mere mandir from the same film). He also produced songs that became iconic for certain occasions—no wedding in North India for decades was complete without the wedding band playing Babul ki duaein leti jaa, the bidai song from Neel Kamal. Embellished with hues of Raag Bhoop, Chaudhvin ka chand ho, the sensuous Rafi number from Chaudhvin Ka Chand, catapulted Ravi to the big league in the 1960s. He was hired by big-ticket production houses from the South such as Gemini Films and AVM. In the late 1980s, he continued his South sojourn under a brand-new credit line, ‘Bombay Ravi’, scoring for a string of Malayalam films, some of which turned out to be sensational hits. He was decorated with the Padma Shree in 1987.