Bhavgeet Through 80 Years

Wadkar grew up listening to bhavgeet. Performances by Gajananrao Watwe,the artiste who is credited for bringing the genre into the mainstream in the ’30s,were attended by thousands of people until the ’70s. Though Wadkar did not catch him live,he remembers watching these performances on TV and hearing them on the radio. “I might have performed over 25,000 songs through my career,but I will never write a bhavgeet. The writing needs to be beautiful for a bhavgeet to sound good. It’s all about how you express words,as opposed to how the music sounds. It’s not like today’s film music where people insert words just so that a song sounds good.”

Mainstream Hindi film music singers have also dabbled with the form. Lata Mangeshkar,Asha Bhosle and Mohammed Rafi were fans of the genre,which mostly has themes on love and longing. Wadkar says,“Bhavgeet is a lot like ghazals,but is not written as couplets. It is one of those forms of music where you can see people hanging on to every word they sing. On stage,when a singer delivers a particular turn of phrase,you can actually feel like you are reaching into someone’s being with your words. It is beautiful.”

kevin.lobo@expressindia.com

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