viju shah – bade miyan to bade miyan, chhote miyan subhanallah
Suddenly people around are doing a lot of discovery. India woke up rudely to the auction of Gandhi’s belongings in USA and the government set-off on a Gandhi-discovery mode, quite a few posts are trying to discover good old days of poetry and lyrics by Sahir and other dead poets, somebody discovered old movies like Bhumika, Jalwa while some were trying to discover the roots of TN politics and cinema. My last post on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got only a single comment, which means it was neglected totally and I was feeling dejected. So, when I suddenly heard the song tu cheez badi hai mast-mast, and I set-off on a discovery of my own.
The title of the post is hence justified as being one of Viju Shah’s popular soundtracks for the movie Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan, as well as being a reference to his father Anandji of the Kalyanji-Anandji fame. By the way, Viju has also been credited for some of his works in the name of Vijay Shah. He started-off his music career as a music arranger and conductor for lots of movies where Kalyanji-Anandji duo were the music directors. Some of the famed work he had done was in Don starring Amitabh Bachchan, Subhash Ghai’s Krodhi, Amitabh Bachchan starrer Nastik, Ferzo Khan’s Janbaaz etc. But Viju got a huge recognition with Rajiv Rai’s Tridev.
In fact, insiders claim that Viju Shah was unofficially the music director of Tridev, but the credits still read Kalyanji-Anandji. Tridev, released in 1989, went onto become a huge blockbuster and the song Oye-Oye, although a plagiarised one, was the song of the year. The song gathered so much notoriety that it had to be banned in Mumbai because lots of college going students used it for eve-teasing. While Amit Kumar did all the yelling, Sapna Mukherjee walked away with Filmfare award for Best Female Singer. From Tridev started Viju Shah’s long and successful association with Rajiv Rai.
Seeing the wide success of Tridev, Rajiv Rai signed on Viju Shah for his next venture Vishwatma which hit theatres in 1992. This was the debut movie of Divya Bharti as well as Jyotsna Singh, who played Soniya – the love interest of Chunkey Pandey in the movie. Sadly enogh, this was Jyotsna’s only performance in the movie industry. Talking of the music, Viju did not disappoint us at all. He came up with some really nice numbers like Dil Le Gayi Teri Bindiya Yaad Aa Gaya Mujhko India and Saat Samandar Paar Mai Tere Peech-Peeche Aa Gayi. Both these songs caught the attention of cinegoers for the simplicity of the lyrics by Anand Bakshi. There was also a romantic song Aankho Mei Hai Kya Tasveer Teri and I liked this song a lot. Viju’s strength was techno kind of music, which used a lot of synthesizer and keyboard work. He also made good use of bass-drums, he was heavily inspired by African music and tunes.
Vishwatma did not do that well at the BO, but nevertheless, music was good and Rajiv Rai worked with Viju Shah again in Mohra. This movie, out in theatres in 1994, has been their biggest hit ever. Although the plot of Mohra was hackneyed, it was executed very well. In fact, Rajiv Rai was one of the rare directors who consistently gave Naseeruddin Shah commercial and mainstream roles, starting from Tridev, then followed it in Vishwatma and then Mohra where Naseeruddin Shah played the role of a blind editor of a newspaper who actually turns out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The music of the movie was top-notch and a megahit. The song Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast, again used heavily by eve-teasers, became the anthem of the nation. The song was lifted from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Dum Mast Kalandar Mast Mast but Indianised well. When I first heard the song, I could not believe my ears, was it Udit Narayan singing? Udit Narayan’s voice is so gruff in the song, a far-cry from his soft romantic numbers like Pehla Nasha. The picturisation of the song also landed in controversy with Chinni Prakash giving too many hip-gyration movements and the provocative lyrics objectifying women. Nonetheless, the song was on everybody’s lips. Such was the impact of the song that on completion of 25 weeks of successful running in theatres, Mai Cheez Badi Hoon Mast Mast was added to the movie, to bring in more crowds; and people did come again to watch Raveena Tandon luring them and Naseeruddin Shah.
Other than Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast Mast song, there was another controversial song Tip Tip Barsa Paani. It was sensually picturized exploiting the fantastic chemistry between Akshay Kumar and Raveena Tandon. The score of this song was used by a lot of TV programs as their theme music; Channel V still uses this tune for their show First Day First Show; and quite a few programs down-South have also used it. The songs on side-A of the audio-cassette were so popular that nobody bothered to listen to side-B which had some tremendous compositions like Na Kajre Ki Dhar sung by Pankaj Udhas; it was a soft romantic ghazal with a simple tune. No one would believe that the same composer had given a ghazal composition apart from the sad track Aye Kaash Kahin Aisa Hota and Subah Se Lekar Shaam Tak. Overall, it was a great album bringing out all the variations in Viju Shah’s repertoire.
Pumped by the fantastic response Viju Shah’s music received, Rajiv Rai collaborated again with him in Gupt which released 3 years later in 1997. This movie was a fast-paced suspense, thriller with loads of romance in the form of a triangular love-story involving Bobby Deol, Kajol and Manisha Koirala. Viju was again in top form, he gave great music and bagged the Filmfare Award for Best Background Music. The movie also won Kajol the Best Villain award and Rajiv Rai won the Best Editor award. The background music was chilling, but the soundtrack was even better. The song Duniya Haseeno Ka Mela, rendered by Udit Narayan was a runaway success. So, were the other romantic numbers like Mushkil Bada Ye Pyar Hai, choreograohed in beautiful locales; and Mere Khwabon Mei Tu being a dream sequence. The music sold well, and Viju Shah was in his elements. Each and every song was hummable, and his liking for Deep Purple Forest was pretty evident, almost plagiarised; but he used them to great effect. Gupt was the last success that Rajiv Rai and Viju Shah combo had, as their next two movies performed miserably at BO.
Out of the blue, Rajiv Rai was in the mood to make a romantic movie, leaving behind his friendly genre of potboilers and thrillers. In 2001, Pyar Ishq Aur Mohabbat hit the screens to a glum response. The movie had an insipid story and some uninspired acting by Sunil Shetty, Aftab Shivdasani, Arjun Rampal in his debut performance, and Keerthi Reddy. The movie had some good songs like the catchy title track and my personal favourite Jab Tujhe Maine Dekha Nahi Tha. Viju Shah also composed a ghazal Tum Lakh Chhupe Ho sung by Hariharan, which was melodious. I liked the songs of the movie, but somehow it was not as good as Mohra or Gupt; just about ok.
Having burnt his fingers trying the romantic genre, he went back to his known territory of action-thrillers and in 2004 came Asambhav. But this movie neither had good songs nor was the movie itself any good. This was the last movie where Rajiv Rai and Viju Shah worked together until now.
Other than Rajiv Rai’s production, Viju Shah also successfully composed music for movies in other genres with different producers-directors. In 1996, ABCL conducted a talent hunt and produced a movie with the new finds like Arshad Warsi, Chandrachur Singh, Priya Gill and Simran. The movie was titled Tere Mere Sapne, also alluding to the dreams and aspirations of the talent-hunt winners; and it was directed by Joy Augustine. Viju Shah was roped in following the success of Mohra, as he was known for giving youthful music. The movie had an interesting mix of songs like Aankh Maare Wo Ladki Aankh Maare sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy and Kumar Sanu, which was downright cheap to the soulful Kuchh Mere Dil Ne Kaha, sung beautifully by Hariharan and Sadhna Sargam. The title track was sung pretty well by Udit Narayan and Kumar Sanu. The movie and the music did well, probably the only success that ABCL tasted.
In the same year as Gupt, 1997, came another soundtrack of Viju Shah in the movie Aar Ya Paar directed by Ketan Mehta. This was another thriller-suspense movie and Viju was called in to produce his magical techno score. I actually thought that he did a great job, some of the songs in the movie are still worth listening to. Asha Bhosle singing Dil Diya Pyar Kiya and then following it up with the screeching melody of the title track Zindagi Mei Aata Hai Mauka Ek Baar. But I liked the Pyar Kar Deedar Kar Jo Chahe Karle..Hulle Hulle, sung by Udit Narayan and Hema Sardesai and seductively shot on Deepa Sahi and Jackie Shroff. There was also a soft romantic number Mann Chahe Sanam sung by Abhijeet and Sadhna Sargam, and peformed on-screen by debutant Kamal Sidhu and Jackie Shroff in Vienna.
Viju Shah’s last notable hit music came in 1998, more than a decade ago, in David Dhawan’s Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan. This time Viju venturing into the comedy genre, composed some great music which was rib-tickling and foot-tapping, with songs like Assi Chutki Nabbey Taal and the title track Bade Miyan To Bade Miyan Chhote Miyan Subhanallah. But the most popular track was the roadside song Kisi Disco Mei Jaye sung by Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik; and of course the Makhna song which featured Madhuri Dixit in an extended guest appearance and was sung by Amit Kumar, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik. Both these songs salvaged the movie and lifted the music sales. Viju Shah’s instrumentation was new and his experiment with different sounds was nice and worked well for the movie.
He also had some minor success with the Fitna Dil song in Shikhar, a few songs in Vinashak, Prithvi, Raavan Raj, Yun Hota To Kya Hota and the re-created Victoria No.203. But he was not the same Viju Shah who belted hit tracks one after another in 1990’s. He had so much talent and showed so much potential, fit for a long haul in the movie industry; but then he suddenly disappeared from the active music scene.
I just hope he makes a comeback with some decent scores as I loved his music, swayed to his tunes, hummed his songs and enjoyed the fast-techno music in my car stereo. So long, Viju Shah; till then I shall continue to listen to tu cheez badi hai mast-mast…
Tags: abhijeet, Alka Yagnik, amit kumar, asambhav, asha bhosle, bade miyan chote miyan, gupt, Hariharan, kalyanji anandji, kumar sanu, mohra, naseeruddin shah, prithvi, pyar ishq aur mohabbat, rajiv rai, sadhna sargam, sapna mukherjee, shikhar, tridev, tu cheez badi hai mast mast, udit narayan, victoria no.203, vijay shah, viju shah, vinashak, vishwatma
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
No mention of ‘Tama Tama’ from Aar Ya Paar? That song was a super cracker!!
@Tejas: tat song had an irritating ring to it; and the wording tama tama tama ille… or something like tat .. it was silly. i left it out on purpose, maybe i should have included it
Rals- loved Viju’s work in all the movies mentioned by you.Its a pity he’s hardly heard these days.Udit & Viju made a mast combination as pointed out by you.Come back soon Viju Shah, we still await you!!!
i still dig pyaar ishq aur mohabbat. most of ‘em r my daru-time favs, especially ‘jaise tune toda mera dil, tera dil tootega’! thanks for the post krazyrals!
Yeh post bada hai mast mast.
Infact it is my daily routine in morning to watch Tip Tip daily on e24 in morining.
Kudos over all nice post.
Sweetness… I love Viju Shah’s music… And personally think Aar Ya Paar had a totally rocking soundtrack. So much energy in it… I should pay another visit to that soundtrack.
I guess where Viju Shah failed was when he didn’t improve upon the 80’s and 90’s techno pop sound. I think he should delve now into more deep electronic sounds. I don’t think there are many musicians in India who experiments in that genre.
and you should be happy for Viju Shah after a dismal performance by the Spurious Benjamin Button.
@Gopi: well, u win some…u lose some. i wrote tat ‘benjamin button’ post with equal love and affection but the public sentiments were not in its favor i guess :(
anyways, viju shah’s tracks are awesome and i wondered why nobody had written abt him; so, i took up the cause
his music was not only mast-mast, but also swast-swast…kept me hale and hearty
I loved the ‘gupt gupt’ followed by some tribal noises.. Was a big fan of it.. Until I realized viju shah was being himself by lifting it from a Deep Forest(Not purple) album…
@Sudipto: thanx for pointing tat out, it was a typo; it now stands corrected
Where is Chhal (छल) in your list?, वhich marked a comeback of sorts for Viju Shah a few years back and one of my favorites of that time…
An interesting story to share about my music wallah, where I used to spent a lot of time searching for CDs/DVDs till 3-4 years back.. I always seen him playing and giving demo for various music system and speakers to his customers and to everyone of them he used to play “Gupt”… always.. I asked them one day, Gupt is almost obsolete as its almost 7-8 years old.. He said he has been able to sell music systems mostly due to “Gupt’s” sound effects…
@Pavan Jha: nice story abt the music wallah guy trying to sell stereos and using ‘gupt’ track for demo. I have also mentioned abt listening to his scores in my car stereo bcos of the fantastic techno music, really good sound effects
Love the soundtracks of Aar Ya Paar, Mohra, Vishwatma, Gupt, even Asambhav. I need to revisit Viju Shah’s tunes now, thanks for reminding us.
@Pavan
I believe Gupt was one of the first few audio cassettes to have some special sound effects, Dolby or something or the other. … does anyone remember this?
Aar ya Paar’s music was criminally ignored.It is fantastic and the songs were picturised well too.In fact if we watch gupt the background music was really the soul of the film.Mohra’s music though horribly picturised was Shah’s best.Even today I listen to Saat samundar paar from Vishwatma..really nice song.I wish Viju worked more with other directors also instead of concentrating on Rajiv Rai.When Rajiv failed he also got lost.BTW what hapenned to Rajiv Rai?He was really doing well.I cant imagine he directed Pyar Ishq aur Mohabbat.
Thanks Crazyrals for that trip down memory lane. Man the 90’s were awesome and Viju Shah made them, um, awesomer! LOL!
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I did radio for a few years around 1995 to 1998, and Viju Shah was big out here. Besides the obvious Gupt & Bade Miyan, which were of course HUGE, Tere Mere Sapne whose “Aankh Maare” was requested daily, a couple of other popular tracks included these forgotten gems:
- “Jis Ghadi Tujhko Tere Rab Ne” – Prithvi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHcVEQQL0yc
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- “Ayena Ayena Tere Bin Chaina” – Raavan Raaj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOzOkKEWNd8
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@Tony Mera Naam: yes…they were awesome tracks; infact ‘vinashak’ also had couple of nice songs. viju shah was really good, his compositions were easy to sing…like ‘aankh maare’, ‘tu cheez badi hai’, ‘makhna’….just too good
Crazyrals, dil khush kar diya yaar!!!!
me and my filmy friend are big fan of viju shah….
When Asambhav music hit the stands, we were so excited, that after so many years the man is back…. we bought a cassette each….
I loved the Asambhav title song…. the other songs were decent…
His most underrated and not well recognised album is AAR ya PAAR.. the A side was dhamaka and the B side 1st song ‘man chahe sanam’ was really soothing….
I felt so happy wen Tejas mentioned Tama tama ile…. its inded a cracker….
I still remember the Tridev B/G theme, with sounds of machine gun firing thrown in it… LOL
And the song which kickstarts our daru mehfil is “Yeh toh pehla jaam hai… abhi to shaam hai… raat bhar jaam se jaam takraayega”… full on bewda song..hehe…
@gaurang: even the other 2 songs from tridev were terrific – ‘gali gali mei firta hai’ and ‘gajar ne kiya hai ishara’ … first and last time we saw madhuri doing a belly jiggle
after tat she moved onto better movies and did not look back again
Wow Rals!! That was in-depth look into Viju Shah’s work. Good write-up! Some great compositions in Gupt. I still love the song
‘Becheiniyaan betaabiyaan
Becheiniyaan betaabiyaan
Ye dooriyaan majbooriyaan
Ye dooriyaan majbooriyaan
Mushkil bada ye pyaar hai
Ye pyaar hai…’
Something special in his songs was the arrangement and the 6-8 track recording, he was excellent in that, really used to give a punch!!
He showed a lot of promise…’tip tip barsa pani..’ and the guitar beat still shakes me up…..real bad luck he is not in the arena now…maybe he dint get to work with the right guys…
After reading the post and comments only one
thing I want say “Viju bhai” wapis aajao
bring your original music back to the industry
which is getting used to off stolen music
(some times, talking about some music directors)
We badly need you back to the industry.
I believe he also did the background music and, more importantly, sounds for Andaz Apna Apna. Gives the movie an extra kick.
@Pratik: yes, he did background music and music arrangement for quite a few movies like ‘andaz apna apna’, ‘yalgaar’, ‘lootere’, ‘dil ka rishta’ etc. and his only filmfare award also came for background music of ‘gupt’ as mentioned in the post
Aar ya paar was my favorite. I liked the movie too and I am sure music played a BIG hand in that.
@crazyrals – Wasn’t Deewanapan and Dil Hi To Hai the debut movies of Arjun Rampal and Divya Bharati?
@Ravi: debut … i meant….acting debut and not by release dates on-screen…
I liked it! Since you guys seems like Sadhana Sargam’s fans.. I’d like to shre with you this event I just came across… Called Dil Ki Awaz, where Sadhana Sargam is going to be singing some old Lata Mangeshkar songs as a tribute to the singer, on August 1st 2009 at Music academy. There is a 10 % OFF on tickets boooked on FindNearYou.com. Check HERE for your reference
Guys I read a review of the event..Dil Ki Awaz that had spoke of.. It seems the show was awesome! I missed…it.. if you guys wanna know how it was exactly.. you may check it out HERE
You must also listen to the soundtrack of my film ‘Chhal’ and also the song he composed for my unreleased film ‘anjaan’. This guy is an unheralded genius.
coincidentally, last week suparn verma visited my orkut profile and now your comment on my post … wow!
@hansal: thank u so very much for gracing my post. i did listen to ‘chhal’ but somehow only shaan’s track ‘chup-chaap’ stuck with me. on your recco, will listen to it again.
by the way, how do i get hold of compositions from ‘anjaan’ which is unreleased? should i wait for it? will it be out anytime soon?
viju shah is definitely a genius, especially in the thriller genre. nobody to beat him there
I am his great fan…i love to hear the news on his forthcoming films. i like all songs which are being composed by him. i think the fast tracks of GUPT and romantic songs of PYAR ISHQ AUR MOHABBAT were one of the best albams in the bollywood industries and no music director can match the style of VIJU SHAH’s music. i wish him all the best for the future films……………..