One song at a time - 39. Mohe Bhool Gaye Saawariya

(Naushad)

"Bhairav is so fundamental to Indian tradition that its impaction on the nation's musical soul can never be overstated. Even the unlettered in the land is familiar with its germ in some form or the other. The overlay of Bhairav strains on an early, bucolic Indian morning affords a purifying experience like no other. Verily, it falls to the lot of the noblest of rAgas, deserving of renewal and reflection in the portals of the mind every single day." Thus wrote Rajan Parrikar in his article for SAWF titled "Bhairav - The Primordial Sound" . He was talking about the Hindustani Bhairav whose Carnatic counterpart in Mayamalavagowla.

Mayamalavagowla has been used a lot in Tamil film music. An old gem that I heard is in the movie 'Pattinathar', which starred T M Soundarrajan as the hero. The song was, "nilave nee oru sedhi sollaayo" and was tuned very similar to the Tyagaraja's famous krithi, "thulasi dalamulache". Then we had the Vishwanathan Ramamurthy's classic, "kallellaam maanikka kallaagumaa", which inspired A R Rahman to create "suntha hai mera kudha" in 'Pukar'. With Illayaraja's entry Mayamalavagowla was taken to a absolutely new high. The songs are too many to list. It suffices if I use the Sanskrit phrase, "na bhootho na bhavishyathi" (neither in the past nor in the future) to describe what Raja has done with Mayamalavagowla.

Compared to the Tamil films the usage of Mayamalavagowla (Bhairav) in Hindi films is fairly limited I would say. One Bhairav based song which has been a perennial favourite in Hindi Film Music is the Shakeel Badayuni written and Nauhad tuned, 'Mohe Bhool Gaye Saawariya" from the film 'Baiju Bawra', sung impeccably by Lata. I had written earlier about Amir Khan singing for Tansen in this movie. The movie was a great musical hit with songs like 'tu ganga ki mauj', 'man tadpat hari darshan ko' and 'O duniya ke rakhwale'. In fact you can say that this movie was a show case for Rafi's vocals but I like this Lata beauty the best in this movie.
Mayamalavagowla is a raga with many shades and Naushad uses the sad shade, if I can call it that. The loneliness and sadness of the heroine (the feeling of 'viraha' as we say) is communicated very well by the way the raga is used. Lata, as usual, does a terrific job of getting the right shade of the raga. The melody is lilting and it is no wonder that it has had a long shelf life.

Naushad was one of the most famous music directors of his times. He was well respected for his knowledge of Hindustani classical music and had given many 'hits' during his time. It must also be stated that opinion about Naushad's music is quite sharply divided. There is one group which holds him as the greatest composer in Hindi film music while group feels that his music lacked the imagination and innovation that was present in other music directors like Salilda, Madanmohan and Roshan. I remember reading an article which said that Naushad generally took a 'bandish' in a particular raga and build his song around it and he himself added nothing much to the raga. I probably lie somewhere in between these two extremes. Some of his songs I like but there are quite a few songs which I find quite clichéd. The number of Naushad songs in my playlist is quite less compared to the number of songs he has tuned. 'mohe bhool gaye saawariya' is definitely in my playlist. So let's go listen to it now.