Bappi Lahiri was the 'original copycat': What makes the disco king claim the oxymoronic title

I was five, and in the sickroom in a boarding school, when the other kids egged me to entertain them. I climbed to the top bunk of a bed, and sang on an invisible mike, “I am a disco dancer, zindagi mera gaana” [Disco Dancer, 1982]. The kids cheered for a cure. The bed gasped. As I jumped, the bed broke. I came crashing down. The principal was informed. I got caned for behaving, what else, like a sick child. That is how enduring Bappi Lahiri ’s music was and still is to the kid in me. Sick! Slang for cool these days. Only a day before his death, I was teasing Twitter folk, nudging them with “Who remembers?” the tune of ‘Jimmy Jimmy Aaja Aaja,’ yet another banger track from the Disco Dancer soundtrack. In the sick room, these songs had certainly enlivened us kids of the incurable illness of boredom. Unlike us, Bappi Lahiri was presumably never bored. Music was his mood pill. In 1988 alone, when Bappi Lahiri was peaking as the most sought-after music composer, he recorded 180 songs for 35 films, earning himself a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.  It was also a period when he hand-churned hit disco songs, meeting supply for demand. Everyone copied, but Bappi Lahiri openly admitted his source. Some of Bappi Lahiri’s tunes may not have aged well in light of its inspired source, but all of his music is quite incredibly never dull to even first-time listeners. While he copied, or as we politely allege, lifted quite liberally, and at a time when woke social media was not around to cancel him, he remains original in doing so. Quite often you will notice it is never a bland lift. He changes the instruments, tweaks the tempo, and refines the beat. In fact, it is through his music that one discovers the original, and sometimes, his is the more endearing version. Back then, there were two ways to spot the copy. One way to recognise ‘Dil Mera Todo Na’ [Dance Dance, 1987] was literally plagiarised from ‘Don’t Break My Heart’ was to grow up in an affluent household where early onset obsession with Western pop music was not considered white-people’s noise but encouraged. The other way was to wait for the internet era to attain enlightenment. I belong to the latter class. It is only when I heard the refrain “aowaa aowaa” in ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ [on YouTube] that I spooled the audio tape of my memory back as ‘Auva Auva Koi Yahan Nache’ [Disco Dancer]. By then, it did not matter who the original was. I was hooked to Bappi Lahiri’s beats. [caption id=“attachment_10379171” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Bappi Lahiri[/caption] But for even something further back, like Andy Williams’ 1970 popular solo song ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,’ which could not get any more sickly sweet, Bappi Lahiri decided to turn it into ‘Dur Dur Tum Rahe’ [Chalte Chalte, 1976]. There is another challenge to it. Who can copy it better? Composer Rajesh Roshan was inspired by the same melody but his composition ‘Jhilmil Sitaron Ne Kaha’ [Khote Sikkey, 1988] operates at a grander scale, turning it into a romantic duet with a cooing chorus in the background. Note that lyrically, ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ becomes in transcreation Twinkling Stars Have Spoken Above in Roshan’s number, whereas the lyrics apply an immeasurably vague distance in Bappi Lahiri’s copy, which is telling of the varying degrees of association by disassociating. Bappi Lahiri did not always apply method, but when he did, it was gold. In ‘Dur Dur Tum Rahe,’ Bappi Lahiri keeps the intimate sweet core of the melody but tweaks the flavours for umami. In his version, the mood changes from sentimental to sensual. If one had to compare the two copies,

Bappi Lahiri wins in the oxymoronic category of most original remake simply because while he stays faithful to the original, he does not overkill it with his creative inputs — the essence and purity remains the same.

His wildly popular lifts such as ‘Inteha Ho Gayi’ [’The Runner’], ’Tamma Tamma Loge’ [’Tama Tama’], ‘Sochna Kya’ (’Lambada’), ‘Hari Om Hari’ (’One Way Ticket’), and ‘Zoobie Zoobie’ (‘Brother Louis’) are equally hooky, which most current composers remixing his tunes cannot seem to replicate. For example, ‘Tamma Tamma Again’ [Badrinath Ki Dulhania, 2017] pales to match the tempo [or the spunk[ that Bappi Lahiri’s copy achieved. ‘Tamma Tamma Again’ is unnecessarily busy and loud, the thumpy beat drowns in the din, as if amping the volume to ear-splitting levels will do the trick. I grew up vacillating between two socially incompatible cultures — the boarding school where Hindi cinema was considered vernie trash, and my mother’s colourful, lower class, certainly not as painfully aesthetic as the Hindi movie’s kotha, where dancing riotously to ‘Taaki Taaki,’ ‘Oi Amma,’ ‘Nainon Mein Sapna,’ ‘Kasam Paida Karne Waale Ki,’ and ‘Ek Ankh Maroo Toh’ freed my well-mannered, sterile, English-spouting soul. These songs are now considered retro cool and remixed. In the Sridevi-Jeetendra ’80s starrers, or the early films of Mithun Chakraborty, the lack of highfalutin poetry in lyrics, supplanted with colloquial phrases, idioms, jokes, and stories of the plebs, mixed to his rhythmic synth beats, one can find Bappi Lahiri democratising music, taking it to the common people in the streets, speaking in their tongue, their tastes. These ‘chaalu’ songs have spawned its own genre in Govinda’s comedy films, and now Varun Dhawan’s films. If you listen to ‘Main Toh Raste Se Jaa Raha Tha,’ does it not swear its allegiance to Bappi Lahiri’s pedestrian-on-pedestal philosophy? That chalu-ness is an ongoing moment. Even now, if I catch a whiff, a strain of his insanely catchy beats, my foot begins to tap without my mind’s prior consent. It is not as if Bappi Lahiri has not composed raag-based melodies, or anything original at all — an occasional mellow bone he tossed for musicologists to fetch in the garbage they call his massy music that he loved inordinately. To match his flamboyance [and bling], the classical songs are rare baubles buried in heaps of shimmering tunes to rifle through. If you want to break a bed, say hello to a shiny, disco ball instead. Manish Gaekwad is a freelance writer and the author of Lean Days_, a novel exploring a gay man’s identity in India._ Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.