As journalistic requests go, this was possibly the strangest. Fittingly enough it was from Bappi—which is how Alokesh Lahiri, 69, was best known. He called me up late one night. Earlier that day, I’d shot an interview with him for a TV show.
Bappi, 54 then, had come down to our set at Mehboob studio in Mumbai’s Bandra, along with his son Bappa. The interview had gone off pretty well I thought, with sensational revelations on his swag and sartorial sense, namely the kilo of jewelry on him, while he walked around in rose-tinted shades, even indoors. Much of it was inspired by hip-hop artistes in the West, he said.
But the phone call was about something else. “Bappa is very upset,” Bappi said. “Throughout the interview, you’ve called me Bappi. And not Bappi Da. Please change it.” Unable to figure how editing that was even possible, gently explaining that the show being casual, I called guests by their first name, I was mildly irritated that it was Bappi making this odd demand.
In my head, Bappi Da was cool—defined as someone who cares little about how he’s judged by external surroundings, choosing to remain his own man, rather than a character constructed by consensus.
As a public persona therefore, he was unabashed about his paunch and double chin, wholly oblivious to gags on his voice, Bengali accent, and his lyrics—‘You are my chicken fry. You are my fish fry… You are my masala dosa. You are my samosa….’ Or him being the king of bling, Bappi Da had unwittingly (or wittingly) modeled himself on the pop-culture of the wild West, whose stars thrive on standing out from among the regular crowd.
Bappi Da was more ‘Meatloaf’ or ‘Elton John’ in Hindi films, where music has traditionally been taken so seriously that his contemporaries or past greats—Shankar-Jaikishen, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and hundreds others—have appeared suave and dignified like classical musicians, or bland and boring like bankers.
No knock. Just saying. For, what is showbiz without its OTT bizarreness and eccentricities? The uninhibited Kishore Kumar was just that. In Bollywood, where rock-stardom is outsourced to movie stars, Ranveer Singh, from the current crop, is the one who gets it.
A minor flipside for ‘Disco King’ Bappi Da’s shiny gold on his chest is it may have distracted from his discography that is pretty much 18 karat gold itself. He was a trained classical musician, who almost professionally began dabbling in tabla at age 3. He entered the mainstream scene in the ’70s, when melody still ruled. How do you define melody? Well, melody khao, khud jaan jao! And he could move you with it.
A good playlist from the time will inevitably have ‘Pyar mein kabhi kabhi’ from Chalte Chalte (1976), if not the film’s killer title track; or ‘Pyar maanga hai tumse’ (College Girl, 1978), for that matter. He ruled in the ’80s, when crappy dholak songs were rendering the scene too low for RD Burman to effectively participate in it.
Bappi Da arguably brought synthesized disco into the pop discourse, with beats so young at heart that you can’t but continue to move to the Namak Halaal soundtrack (‘Jawani janeman’, ‘Raat baaki’, ‘Pad ghungroo’) at a Bollywood night. In that sense he was that rickety bridge between RD Burman in the ’70s and AR Rahman in the ’90s for music, with an ethereal, youthful quality, that can transcend generations.
Was Bappi Da a plagiarist—meaning he blatantly lifted tunes without crediting the source? Especially towards the ’90s? Yes. Some of this occurs in Bollywood because of briefs handed down (sure, you can say no). And the incredible volume that is churned out to keep a prolific film industry running on the back of music alone.
The Beatles did 13 albums in their career—same as U2. Not that top musicians even keep a record of such numbers in Bollywood, according to Bappi Da’s Wiki bio, he recorded 180 songs for 33 albums in 1986 alone, entering the Guinness Book.
There is no condoning thievery still. I think its craziest point would have been in 1990, with musicians fighting over who had stolen the Guinean Mory Kante’s song ‘Tama’ first: Laxmikant-Pyarelal as ‘Jhumma chumma’ in Hum (1991), or Bappi Da as ‘Tamma tamma’ in Thanedar (1991), which has now been re-remixed for millennials in the film Badrinath Ki Dulhaniya (2017), while the track had already been used in the background score of Agneepath (1990), and later a Telugu number!
In a moment that proves irony can reverse karma, Bappi Da sued the US band Truth Hurts in 2002 for lifting a riff from his lesser-known song ‘Kaliyon ka chaman’. He won credit in a Los Angeles court. Music connoisseurs in the West may have first heard his work then. Or perhaps in Adam Sandler’s Don’t Mess With The Zohan (2008), with the track ‘Jimmy Jimmy’.
Which is a cult classic in the Eastern Bloc, across former Soviet Russia, with fans over multiple generations nuts over this number enough, to have even placed a statue of Jimmy (or Mithun Chakroborty from Disco Dancer, 1982), I’m told, in Almaty, Kazakhstan! Actor Chris Pratt much later heard the Bappi Da song ‘Jhoom Jhoom Jhoom Baba’ in the desi trailer of Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, and he wished it could be there in the American version too.
I have my favourite, if you want to dig deeper into Bappi Da gold classics. First, shut your eyes. Switch on ‘Tu mujhe jaan se bhi pyaara hai’ from the Mithun starrer, Wardat (1981). Bappi Da sings a mellifluous duet with Usha Uthup. Identify the male and female voice as you go along. Give yourself a point for each time you get it right. Send me your score. Thank me later!