#436

         Song:   man ki maina bol rahi hai, boley man ki maina
                 uski boli har leti hai mere man ka chaina
                 mere man ka chaina..
                 bol rahi hai, boley man ki maina...

         Film:   Sampatti (1949)
         Singer: Talat Mahmood
         Music:  Timir Baran
         Lyrics: Pt. Bhushan
         *ing:   Suchitra Devi?,?,Talat Mahmood

 Song # 2 from the CD. Another lovely, old-style composition. The
 opening bars sound rather similar to some Saigal tunes like "do naina
 matwaare tihaare..".

 I have heard only three songs of Timir Baran to date- this one,
 Hemantda's "ae dil tuu kahiin le chal" from Shole(1953) and of course,
 the famed Hemant-Geeta tandem "aaya toofaan...kaise koi jiye" from
 Baadbaan(1953). Even within these three, the common strand of his
 distinctive compositional style is identifiable: slightly drawn-out
 strains, repeating sections of words in different tunes, a strong
 penchant for rising into high notes (Talat, again, sounds wonderful as
 he rises higher, with "vahaa.n jhoot ki ganga behtii..." in this song),
 and so on.

 One aspect of Timir Baran's music really fascinates me (based on this
 meagre sample space of three songs) - his non-preference for
 regularity. Let me elaborate - a certain pattern or order can be
 identified in a lot of songs, so that based on listening to a few lines
 fairly good guesses can be made about the tune of the song's
 mukhada/antaraa. However, Timir Baran's fairly unpredictable musical
 trajectories and rather subtle rhythmic bases make this quite a
 difficult task - you never know where the tune may go next. They are
 not complex or convoluted, just unpredictable. And profoundly
 melodious, I might add. This was quite typical with the old masters
 from the 30s/40s like Ghulam Haider, R C Boral, etc. I think. Someone
 who's been more exposed to this era can probably comment more.

 As against the other two I mentioned, which are rather plaintive,
 dolorous songs, this one brims with joie-de-vivre, a reassuring
 vitality. And the musical asymmetry I mentioned above actually brings
 this forth very effectively; like he's got so much to say that he just
 goes on singing and the orchestra keeps following him where he goes.
 This one does have a more regular rhythmic base, though - faint tabla
 beats can be heard in the background. And a set of instruments
 (violins? harmonium?) accompanies the vocals note to note... this is a
 very typical old-style compositional technique, I think.

 The HFGK mentions one more song in Talat's voice in this movie (words
 elude me at this point). This is probably one of his earliest screen
 appearances ?