Golden notes

The title song of the latest Marathi film Dhating Dhingana features a man clad in a pink shirt standing in a crowd. As the commotion starts on screen with a police chase,a sonorous voice in the background sings,Bole toh jhol thoda,thodi si love story,be happy don’t worry,woo-ooo woo-ooo…/ Paisa cha mage mage bhage re duniya sari raja ho ya bhikai,woo-ooo woo-ooo… There is something hard to miss in the song. It’s the signature style deep and resonating voice of the legendary music composer and singer Bappi Lahiri.

The song marks Lahiri’s debut as a singer into the Marathi film. Incidentally,much before he won many hearts with Ooh la la from The Dirty Picture,he had planned his comeback with this peppy track with composers Ajay-Atul. The song was recorded two years ago but was released only last week.

“We wanted to work with Bappi da as from a long time; we grew up listening to his songs and compositions. He is the unsurpassed disco king. In fact,his songs can be categorised into a different genre itself. The track we came up for the title of the film was like a tribute to Bappi da,” says music director of the film Atul Kulkarni.

When the duo approached Lahiri to sing the song,he was slightly skeptical about singing in a different language,but nonetheless was enthusiastic to give it a shot. “He had some problems with Marathi pronunciation,as he has a strong Bengali accent. You can notice it even when he sings Hindi songs. But all this is a part of his style. We had to change some words in the lyrics because he had difficulty pronouncing them. The song is a mix of Hindi,English and Marathi. The veteran that Baapi da is,we would say that he sailed through the song with ease and grace,” adds Kulkarni.

The song was kept as a secret till the recording was over. Even the producer of the film,Mandar Devasthali was unaware of it,though he was given intimation by the composer duo that he would be pleasantly surprised when he found out. “Ajay told me that I would go mad if I knew who was singing the song. I could have never even imagined that I would have a veteran like Bappi da singing the tilte track of my film. I kept guessing but it was only after the recording of the song at Yash Raj Studios that I got to hear the song and I instantly recognised his voice and style,” recalls Devasthali.