In 1965, acoustic music orthodoxy was shaken at the Newport Folk Festival as Bob Dylan turned electric. On the other side of the Atlantic, in 1967, the Beatles released ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, which created the very idea of a concept album in popular western music. Sandwiched between these seismic shifts, far away from the western shores, was a chubby, bespectacled goofy looking young man who churned the imagination of Hindi film music with the soundtrack of Nasir Hussain’s Teesri Manzil (1966). Rahul Dev Burman or Pancham as he was fondly called, burst on the scene with eight tracks for the film that gave new meaning to the word ‘revolutionary’. The title track of Teesri Manzil, a film reminiscent of Raymond Chandler or Dashiel Hammett style of film noir, became a long-standing template with which to score thrillers and mysteries.

Pancham died 32 years ago which is about the same span as his musical career. He debuted as an independent composer with Chhote Nawab in 1961 and continued until his death in January 1994. The second half of the 1980s was arguably the nadir for Hindi film music. Most films had a jamboree of garish clamour masquerading as music and the occasional melodic respite was largely due to Pancham. Saagar in 1985 had tunes spanning Goan overtones to sensuality induced by bass, flute, and tabla. Pancham aficionados would insist on the 1985 film, Sitamgar, as one of the more underrated masterpieces. Around the same period, Pancham’s collaboration with Gulzar on albums like Ijaazat and Dil Padosi Hai (a private album) in 1987 housed a staggering range from the merry to the melancholic, rendered impeccably by Asha Bhosle. Despite such creative overtures, the period through till the early 90s saw Pancham grapple with spells of inactivity, surrender to mediocrity, plummet into intense self-doubt and wage a lonely battle with cardiac ailments. It was from this abyss of neglect and crippling despair that he conjured his final act: ‘1942, A Love Story’.

Death froze Pancham at exactly the right mythological moment, just when he had rediscovered his creative mojo and was on the cusp of vindication. He did not live to see the response to his last album. In death, he became the forever wounded, maverick genius who had been abandoned, and for which mass reparations were in order.

Posthumous admiration

The posthumous Pancham has perhaps had a fuller afterlife. This reclamation could be attributed to various causes. To begin with, there was a collective guilt around having driven a redoubtable artist to depression and possibly death. This lent an emotional gravity to his fandom which went beyond quotidian admiration for his craft. As India opened its economic floodgates to the world in the 1990s, satellite televisions, FM radio and a burgeoning night life created new spaces and Pancham became the soundtrack for these avenues. Soon, remixes became a booming industry. In its formative years, this industry fed on Pancham’s creative capital, reincarnating him to newer listeners. Subsequently, the internet opened up an abundance of resources and made community-building easier. Fan clubs emerged, some with imaginative names like ‘Burmaniacs, RDent Fan(atic)s or Panchums’.

These also opened him to investigation with a mathematical precision and a forensic zeal. Some critics have ‘cancelled’ him on grounds of plagiarism, sparking ruminations and debates on the very concept of originality in music and the porosity of its boundaries. Despite limitations of using contemporary parameters to evaluate historic actions, ethical concerns and artistic integrity surrounding some of the allegations remain. Arguably, it would have been prudent of Pancham to offer formal credit to some of his tracks.

However, musical traditions have evolved through a healthy mix of borrowing and conservation across generations and geographies. Assessing a three decade panoramic legacy that far transcends a miniscule fraction of infractions requires a measure of proportion. After all, who owns the copyright of the refrains of Raga Jhinjhoti or the tempo of Jhaaptal? Pancham’s own demonstration in a televised interview of how S.D. Burman’s ‘Thandi Hawayen’ seamlessly moulds into Roshan’s ‘Rahe na rahe hum’ and eventually his own ‘Saagar Kinaare’ is a case in point. ‘Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle’ from the film Aa Gale Lag Jaa, said to be inspired by Elvis Presley’s ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’, is itself a cover of a century-old American folk song. And yet, it was Pancham’s Hindi reinterpretation that became an anthem of love and longing, achieving a cult status as far away as Algeria where it came to be known as ‘Janitou’ after a central refrain of the song, ‘Jaane Tu Yaa Jaane Na’.

A distinct musical signature

Perched at the intersection of melodic depth and sonic innovation, he belonged as much to the golden era pantheon of melodists like Naushad, Madan Mohan, Jaidev or Roshan as he did to the later coterie of tech-fuelled orchestrators like Bappi Lahiri. Importantly, he had to step out of the shadows of his father, the giant S.D. Burman, and create his own musical signature. This conscious defying of privilege needed conviction and courage. Neither could traditionalists disown him for being noisy nor could the modernists shun him for being bland.

His tunes, for most part, were eminently hummable even without any sonic embellishments. ‘Jis Gali Mein Tera Ghar’, rendered by Mukesh, from the 1970 superhit film Kati Patang, is a balmy melody which uses instruments such as the echolette, the vibraphone and the transicord to evoke the physical ripple of oars. In the Lata Mangeshkar gem, Dilbar Dil se Pyare, from the versatile album Caravan (1971), Pancham starts by striking wood on the brass lining of the timpani while using the rabab to give it the steamy gypsy-like texture.

His wanderlust made him a ‘rooted cosmopolitan’ as he seamlessly fused linear western with cyclical Indian rhythms. The sprightly Kishore Kumar solo ‘Saamne Yeh Kaun Aaya’ from Jawani Diwani (1972) exemplifies this. Calypso-Latino in its essence, it contained the Pedal Matka, a custom-made instrument where the opening of an earthen pot is covered tightly with stretched leather connected to a foot pedal. This allowed the player to manually adjust the pitch and tension while drumming. While highly celebrated for his miraculous breath control adding rhythmic hefts in songs like ‘Duniya Mein logon ko’, he unfortunately remains underappreciated for his extraordinary background music.

A central feature of Pancham’s music is how he incorporated a diversity of emotions and musical genres. His compositions drift from the serious ‘Yun neend se woh jaane chaman’ to the comical ‘Ek chatur naar’, from the philosophical ‘Tujhse Naaraz Nahin’ to the absurd ‘Aa Ee Masterji ki aayi chitthi’, from the waltz-like sacred ‘Elahi tu sun le’ to the raunchy ‘Aao Na Gale lagao na’, from the wistful ‘Raah pe rahte hain’ to the playful ‘Kal kya hoga kisko pata’, from the sinus-soaked Bhupinder singing the minimalist ‘Ek Hi khwab’ to the elaborate medley in Hum Kisi se Kam Nahin. Contrary to perceptions about his predominant western tendencies, his understanding of the subcontinental musical ethos presents a vivid tapestry; from a Raga Khamaj based classical ‘Jiya na laage mora’ to qawwalis (‘Pal do pal ka saath hamaara’), from the Bihag infused ‘Piya Bawari’ to the Bhatiyali inspired ‘Majhi re majhi ramaiya majhi’.

An ambassador of pluralism

At a time when India is caving inward towards jingoistic nationalism, Pancham reminds us how to be an ambassador of pluralism. His alchemic ability to blend Indian traditions with Big Band Jazz, the Brazilian Bossa Nova, and Afro-blues liberated him from any narrow musical citizenship. His music continues to be a consummate antidote to jingoism. By democratising world music, he made global sounds accessible to every Indian at the turn of a radio knob. He broke rules not to transgress but to trailblaze. He enriched music in the breach of norms rather than their observance. Beyond its exuberance and spunk, we have many lessons to learn from Pancham - a free-spiritedness, a sense of curiosity, generosity, and a celebratory vein of secularism.

Happy 87th Pancham! As we celebrate your birthday this 27th of June, we hope to remember not just your music but for what it stood for. May your eternal resolve of pluralism prevail. May there be more fans than fanatics.

(Rajendran Narayanan is a social scientist affiliated with LibTech India. Kalyan Sundareswaran is an IT professional with Infosys. Views expressed are personal.)