People We Lost in 2022: Bappi Lahiri

Where does one begin with Bappi Lahiri? Let’s start with a personal anecdote. I was once stuck in a traffic jam in Mumbai’s Andheri area, on the way to Juhu Circle. There was a line of cars about to cross horizontally, headed by a Mercedes Benz. I happened to look inside it from my humble auto rickshaw and did a double take. Was that man in sunglasses sitting on the passenger seat next to the driver Bappi Lahiri? I wasn’t sure. So I did the most obvious thing. I looked in the region of his neck and sure enough, it was wrapped in so much gold that you could shell out the down payment for your own Mercedes if you were to sell the jewelry. It was Bappi da himself, indeed, donning his signature shades even though the sun had logged off work for the evening. And what struck me the most was that the man known as the ‘Disco King’ – who’s accumulated more hit songs over the decades than Gen Z people have accumulated years in their lives – had the etiquette, decency and humility to sit in front next to his driver, instead of commandeering instructions while sprawled on the backseat.

Where does one begin when talking about Bappi Lahiri’s music? Let’s begin with a child named Alokesh Aparesh Lahiri who was coaxed by his musical parents in Kolkata to learn the tabla when aged just three, an age when many children are learning to form proper sentences. The same child had Kishore Kumar as his maternal uncle, and Lata Mangeshkar dishing out advice to his father on who his tabla teacher should be. That child also grew up idolizing Elvis Presley, and eventually composed music for his first film – the Bengali flick Daadu (1974) – when still only 19. The details of that soundtrack are sadly not available anymore. But we do know one thing for a fact. Lata Mangeshkar, one of Bappi Da’s earliest well-wishers, lent her voice for one of the songs in it.

Where does one go when talking further about Bappi Lahiri’s music? Let’s head with him from Kolkata to Bombay, where he shifted to as a starry-eyed boy still aged only 19. He landed his first Hindi film, Nanha Shikari, a couple of years later in 1973, and eventually made people sit up and take serious notice of him after two more years, when he composed the hit soundtrack for Zakhmee, roping in the holy trinity of Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi for vocal duties. But it’s only towards the end of that decade that something happened which changed the trajectory of his musical journey: Bappi da visited the U.S. and was introduced to disco music. He was at a nightclub in Chicago when the person spinning records played “Stayin’ Alive.” The Indian composer had never heard the Bee Gees track before, and his socks were knocked off in the same way they had been when he’d first come across Elvis Presley. He decided to carry that sound back to India and the rest, literally, is music history. Films like Disco Dancer and Dance Dance cemented his name for posterity and suddenly, Bappi Lahiri became more than a composer. He became a character with his own sense of style that can be defined with just one word — bling.

How does one even begin to explain Bappi da’s fascination for bling?  Well, for that, we again have to turn back to Elvis, because Bappi da has gone on record to state that when he was growing up, he was so fascinated with the gold chains around the rock ‘n’ roll legend’s neck that he vowed to himself that if he ever became famous, he would emulate that look. As it turned out, he did get famous and he did emulate that look. Except, that he took it to such a level that he even trademarked his style to thwart the attempts of numerous copycats who tried to mimic him (but were as inauthentic as a glass diamond is to the real thing). In fact, even Michael Jackson was reportedly left awestruck when he saw Bappi da’s gold Ganesha chain, with the duo going on to form such a close bond that when the King of Pop passed away, the King of Disco composed a special tribute for him.

Which brings us to the question: Where do we end our own tribute for Bappi Lahiri? Let’s not end it with the image of the man suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnea and lying on a hospital bed in Juhu, where he died on February 15 this year aged 69, because that is no way to remember him. Let’s instead celebrate the achievements of that three-year-old boy tapping his fingers on the tabla his parents had bought him, who went on to fashion an unparalleled career making countless people across the world groove to his beats. Because let’s not forget that Bappi Lahiri was a global icon whose song “Jimmy Jimmy” was sampled by the likes of M.I.A and even became a protest anthem in China during the Covid crisis. So, let’s just say that Elvis would have been proud of the heights that his admirer reached and yet — as that chance encounter we had near Juhu Circle proved — Bappi da never lost his sense of humility or decency.