MADAN MOHAN: AN EMOTIONAL MUSIC DIRECTOR

Though born in Baghdad on 25 June 1924, later settled down in Mumbai and became one of Bollywood’s top music directors, Madan Mohan Kohli started his career as an assistant to Music Director C.ramachandra.

His first break in Bollywood as a fully-fledged music director with his name blazing across the silver screen was in Aankhen in 1950. From then onwards until his untimely demise on July 14, 1975 , he had composed music for nearly 100 films.

During this period he brought the best out of Lata Mangeshkar. His music had a touch of ghazals and a lot of emotionalism. He liked string instruments and the sitar was his favourite. Lata had christened him as the “Ghazal ka Shezadaa” or the Prince of Ghazals. After the film Adaa in 1950 saw the beginning of a new partnership between Lata and Madan Mohan. She had sung in a majority of his future films.

Despite having composed music for nearly 100 films in his illustrious 25 year career he had only 10 box office hits. This was due to his extremely demanding nature and also the fact that several of his tunes he composed were made use of. He had some astounding compositions.

So much so that decades after his demise his compositions were used in Yash Chopra’s film Veer Zaara in 2004 which had Shah Rukh Khan , Preity Zinta and Rani Mukherjee in the cast. The unused tunes were recreated by his son Sanjeev Kohli. Incidentally the film Laila Majnu with Rishi Kapoor too had music by Madan Mohan, when he wanted Kishore Kumar to sing ,it was Madan’s mother who had insisted that Mohamed Rafi should sing and it was Rafi who got the contract ultimately.

In the film Naunihal (1967) Mohd.rafi’s song “Meri Awaz Suno” is played in the background in the scene where the body of late PM Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is being taken in a procession for cremation.his message is given in this song. It is learnt that his daughter Indira Gandhi who had listened to this song had been very emotional.

On this particular song Madan had said “It is a message from one of the greatest world leaders to his countrymen. The very novelty of the situation and the context of the song and the beauty of the message itself provided me with an inspiration which made me do my best and my very best.”

Madan Mohan had won the National award for Dastak (1970) a posthumous award for Veer Zaara, IIFA award, Sangeet award and a Bollywood award.

His thoughts were that a sad and emotional song will stay on for decades and be well remembered.