Bappi- da quits the dance floor

The composer will be remembered for his infectious music and endearing personality

Bappi Lahiri, the composer-singer who made India jive to his foot-tapping tunes for at least three decades, passed away on Tuesday. Since the 1980s, Lahiri’s disco numbers have been a hook for youth to gravitate towards the dance floor as he had a remarkable ability to create simple yet infectious tunes that could be enjoyed on loop. No wonder, for millennials who love hook lines, Bappi- da, as he was fondly called, became a pop icon with whom they could have fun.

No wedding procession in the Hindi heartland could last the distance without “ Bambai se aaya mera dost” (from the film Aap Ki Khatir, 1977) and “Jimmy Jimmy aaja aaja” ( Disco Dancer, 1982), which sounds unusually secular these days. And no sangeet ceremony would be complete before new and wannabe brides danced to “ Mujhe naulakha manga de re” ( Sharaabi, 1984).

At the top of his game, Lahiri composed music for a hero who held a gun in one hand and a microphone in the other, and for a heroine who was no longer coy about her desires. If in the 1970s, the angry young man had made the melodies superfluous with his brooding intensity, by the 1980s, that fellow had kicked his way into clubs and pubs — materialistic spaces — that were forbidden for the Nehruvian hero of the 1950s and 1960s. He wanted to dance like John Travolta and punch like Bruce Lee, a combination that gave birth to the phenomenon of “Gun Master G9” (S urakksha, 1979, and D isco Dancer, 1982). Lahiri’s disco beats gave voice to this restlessness in the air. A series of songs such as “ Koi yahan aha nache nache”, “ Rambha ho”, “ Mere jaisi haseena”, “ Jhoom jhoom baba”, “ Jawani janeman” and “ Zooby zooby” reflected this boisterous energy of an India breaking free from its socialist past.