Sachin Dev Burman

Indian composer and singer (1906-1975)

S. D. Burman was born into the royal house of Tripura and trained in Bengali folk and classical music before becoming one of the two or three composers who defined the sound of Hindi cinema. He scored Guru Dutt's Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool, Bimal Roy's Devdas and Sujata, and Navketan's Guide, Jewel Thief and Taxi Driver. He also sang - a thin, reedy, unmistakable voice he used sparingly. Sharmilee was among his last scores; he died in 1975. His son R. D. Burman reshaped the same industry a generation later.

What made him unmistakable was where he took his melodies from: the boatmen's songs of east Bengal and the hill music of Tripura, dropped into a film idiom without being smoothed out first. He sang too, perhaps a dozen times in a career of a hundred films - a thin, cracked, almost untrained voice he saved for the moments he wanted to sound like nobody else. He worked with Guru Dutt, with Bimal Roy, and for two decades with Dev Anand's Navketan; his son R. D. Burman then rebuilt the same industry on entirely different principles.

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