R.D. Burman
photo: aditijain · public domain ↗Rahul Dev Burman (1939–1994), the son of composer S.D. Burman, grew up inside Hindi film music and began his career assisting his father before emerging as the most inventive Bollywood composer of the 1970s. Immersed as a teenager in Western records, he grafted rock, jazz, disco and Latin rhythms onto Bengali folk and film-song forms, and became notorious for coaxing percussion from beer bottles, cups and combs. His genre-blending restlessness set a template that later composers, including A.R. Rahman, would build on.
R.D. Burman apprenticed under his father, S.D. Burman, before striking out on his own, inheriting the elder Burman's melodic instinct and his habit of drawing film song up from folk roots even while modernizing everything around it.
listen forFollow S.D. Burman's aching, folk-simple 'Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam' with R.D.'s 'Raina Beeti Jaaye' — the same unadorned, deeply Indian melodic core, now framed by his more elaborate arrangement.
As a teenager Burman devoured Western records, the Beatles and Elvis among them, and he became the composer who most fully brought rock-band textures — fuzz guitar, driving drums, psychedelic colour — into Hindi film music.
listen forPlay the Beatles' sitar-laced 'Norwegian Wood' and then Burman's 'Dum Maro Dum' — hear the same late-sixties fusion impulse, Western pop and Indian sound folded into one another and pushed toward the dancefloor.
Burman is often described as adapting the styles of Western artists like Santana, and his cabaret numbers pulse with the same Latin-rock heat — conga-driven grooves and a smoldering, vamping intensity.
listen forSet Santana's 'Oye Como Va' against Burman's 'Piya Tu Ab To Aaja' — both ride a hip-swinging Latin groove and let the rhythm section simmer under a single hypnotic riff.