The Legend Pyarelal ji, his grand piano, and me… Incredible moment of learning Me: Sir, what would make me a better singer? Pyarelal ji: When I don’t hear Rafi or Kishore. When I hear Raju Chithambaram, I would know you are good. If you develop a reputation as a good Rafi singer, you’ll make Rafi even more famous, and obscure Raju… Sing me a non-Laxmikant Pyarelal song I still picked a Rafi song ; ). I sang Madhuban mein Radhika (Naushad ji composition). Pyarelal ji: You have a very good voice and good classical training. How many times during the song did you think about Dilip Kumar regaling the palace mehfil in Kohinoor? I admitted I never did. Pyarelal ji: There you have your answer. Rafi would sing for Johny Walker and sound like Johny. Rafi would sing for Shammi, and he would sound crazy. Don’t worry. You have come to the right man, Pyarelal. You’ll get great learning… The legend then walked me to the grand piano, and had me render “Patta patta”, one phrase at a time, with infinite details, the way he had directed Lata ji & Rafi Sahab. At one point, I naively asked Pyarelal ji if the embellishment was directed by Pyare ji or if Lata ji improvised the song. He admonished me with “Composer kaun hai?” : ) It took me 10 minutes to get the first 2 words right. It took me 2 hours to absorb a minuscule fraction of his genius. I probably did justice to 0.001% https://youtube/watch?v=KHGxTZKTUUA
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 02:31:05 +0000