Friday, August 2, 2013

Pehala Nasha: A Musical Oxytocin

        Info: 'Oxytocin' is a body hormone which is thought to be responsible for 'feeling of love'. It is also called as 'love hormone'.


           
There is another famous hindi-bollywood song in early 90s apart from the one mentioned in title of this blog post. That song is from movie Aashiqui(1990) with words “Bass ek sanam chahiye, Aashiqui ke liye” literally meaning “Just a lover is needed to be in love”.

Logically, to experience the feeling of love, there has to be someone or something to fall in love with.

Feeling of love is itself polymorphic. There are hundreds of types of love people experience. Love for parents, love for nation, love for friends and siblings, love for animals, love for hobbies the list is so long and can be made so specific that we can even make a group of people who love to hate others!!

Well, in the list above, I have deliberately excluded the most ‘glamorous’ type of love, the romantic love. It has earned glamour because this sort of love is never provided by default. It has to be achieved. We get parents, siblings, nation etc. by gift of destiny, no need to earn them specifically; even we don’t have choice regarding it. Loving animals or hobbies is amazing kind of ‘one sided love’ where success is assured. It is assured to be reciprocated. Give these things love and they will give you the joy.

Friends and the lover are not given like this but. You have to earn them. In case of friendship, you have option of variety. You can make as many friends as you want. If one friend has limitations in some thing, other may compensate it with others. Also, there is varied degree of access each friend provides to you and you provide them.

Romantic love is far strict compared to even friendship. In loyal situations, you are not permitted to have multiple romantic lovers. You have to find that one person who appears ‘the perfect’ to you; and you have to achieve that person’s love. Nothing is by gift and nothing is easy. Thus, this type of love has attracted great glamour. It gives sense of achievement, sense of superiority, sense of doing that task which many others in the world would have failed to do. Here, we will particularly discuss about this ‘romantic love’ in this blog post to describe the importance of song.

‘Break-ups in love’ is very different topic. We will just stick to make-ups here for now; just the sense of being in love and feeling of being loved by someone else in similar way. I'll discuss about it someday while writing about some sad song.

Have you ever been in love?? If not, then there is an amazing solution for you to feel the love. Interestingly, it contradicts the words of “Aashiqui” song. You even don’t need the lover to feel the love!! Just listen a song: “Pehla Nasha” from the movie “Jo jeeta wo hi sikander(1992)”!

This song absolutely eliminates the need of being in love (simply, having any Bf/GF/Crush) to experience the love. Just listen and you will feel that you are in love! With whom, you don’t know. In fact, you have nothing to do with it. This song while it’s running span, creates a virtual lover for you. While you are listening to the song, you experience the love for and from this virtual lover and after the song finishes, this virtual lover slowly disappears in a few seconds. These last ‘a few seconds’ after the song is finished are ‘hangover moments’ of the song. Not every virtual experience needs computers!

Before discussing more about the song, let’s have a look at credits. The song belongs to soundtrack of the movie ‘Jo jeeta wo hi sikandar’ along with 6 other awesome tracks. Music is composed by Jatin-Lalit, one among the best composer duos bollywood had. It is penned by Majruh Sultanpuri. It is sung by Udit Narayan and Sadhana Sargam. Song is directed by Mansoor Khan and Faraha Khan(choreography). Director of photography is Najeeb Khan.

Last two directorial credits are not related to music but reason to mention them is the famous slow motion nature of the song. It is the first Hindi and third Indian song filmed in complete slow motion (source:Wikipedia). The song is technically excellent as although the whole song is filmed in slow motion, lip-sync of the actors with the music and vocals matches perfectly. It doesn't happen at all that we feel actors are moving lips unnaturally slow or tempo of lip-sync and vocals is mismatched.

Song has brilliant use of piano. In fact, piano, flute, strings and saxophone are mostly used in the whole song. Piano played in higher octaves has helped to create tender feeling of being in love. Strings have mostly been used to back vocals. This has helped to intensify the meaning of words used in vocals. Lyrics of the song are describing the condition of a person who is recently in love. One is feeling out of the world, caring the least about the world, dreaming about the future life with lover and all. Lyrics used are very simple and even melody is very simple. This has made the song highly catchy and very appealing. It gives listener a feeling that if one is able to describe his or her condition in such a simple way, he or she must be feeling it intensely!

Although simple, song is quite well organized. If you listen carefully, you will realize that Jatin-Lalit have used two different sets of percussions.  The rhythm which is backing the vocals is different from the rhythm backing just-instrumental parts of song. Percussions used to back just-instruments part are very much of western style, to be precise, they are rock-ish. On other hand, percussions used to back vocals are of very much Indian style. This style has been maintained through out the song.

Are you a musical keyboard player/tutor and want to advertise yourself?? Just play the song “pehala nasha” on keyboard, shoot the video and upload it on ‘you tube’ with title “pehala nasha keyboard/piano tutorial”!! You will attract maximum people with this method as almost every Indian desiring to play keyboard, wants to play this song on keyboard and impress friends. There are many piano tutorials for this song on ‘you tube’ and many of them have been visited many a times by viewers!

This song has been inspiration to many of Jatin-Lalit’s future songs. Jatin-Lalit composed many beautiful melodies. There is another song of this duo which whenever you listen, you can relate it with your dreams and may feel “kaaash, life aisi hoti”. This song is “Chand taarein” (Yes Boss-1997) and interestingly, this song too uses piano very brilliantly. “Pehala nasha” has chord progression pattern like “F-Bb-F-C-Dm” and F, C Dm are the chords mostly used in song. This “F-Bb-F-C-Dm” pattern is very reliable to create attractive melodies and you may notice the same pattern in many Gospel songs too (Gospel songs are highly melodious and many of them have been ‘lifted’ in bollywood as ‘romantic songs’)

There is another interesting thing about the song is, unlike many other first-time or first-love songs in bollywood, this song avoids chorus. Song has used just a male and a female singer. May be its because, romantic love is very personal thing between the two people, why others need to interfere in it! And as far as use of chorus in such songs is to be justified the same way, it could be because mostly other people are very interested in such ‘personal matters’!! Jokes apart, song is actually filmed showing multiple pairs including one complex and one simple relation. Hero sings this song for his crush, of course one sided feeling, heroine is singing for hero again in one sided feeling. This is the complex one relation and other is simple, hero’s brother and his love interest, this one has shown with bilateral feelings.

I was five years old when the song released. I didn't understand meaning of words then but was attracted by the beautiful melody and indeed ‘felt something’. Same thing happened when I first listened to “My heart goes on”(Titanic 1997), another song full of feelings!! I was then 10 years old and my English then was like my French is today, knowing just one or two very common words. As I grown up, I started understanding both the songs and feeling them more. Now both the songs have become alternative to Girlfriend, whenever I feel too mechanical about my life, I listen to these songs.

I started understanding this song since early teens. We had ‘Differential calculus’ in mathematics in early college days. Once while watching this song during those days, I noticed what the maths teacher (played by Asrani) is teaching in the class. Asrani is shown teaching differential calculus and I watched the song 3 to 4 times more to find if what is written on blackboard is mathematically correct or not! Then even wondered who must be the man behind using differential calculus example in song instead of any simple algebraic equation! (Even before being able to read what is written on blackboard, I was quite sure that Aamir must have ensured the correctness of what is written on the board owing to his perfectionist nature!).

Recently, an artist named Aala Wardi has recorded the “a Capella” (singing with imitating sounds of instruments vocally and not using any instrument actually) version of the song. Do listen to the same at - Pehala Nasha: Aala Wardi's a Cappella

This is all about the unarguably best romantic song the bollywood has produced (with due respect to all other great songs composed earlier and later). If there exists any god of romance, then “pehala nasha” must be the blessing he has given in his best moods! Lots of thanks to Jatin-Lalit for such a beautiful creation!
         

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