Jaidev, The S.D. Burman Traditionalist Options

[swarapriya]

Jaidev, The S.D. Burman Traditionalist

Jaidev Verma, popularly known as Jaidev, started his film career as an actor. But he had strong musical training and wanted to compose music. S.D. Burman gave him the opportunity to work with him as his assistant in 1951. Chetan Anand recognized the talent of Jaidev and gave him his first major break by assigning him to be a music director for his movie “Joru Ka Bhai” in 1955. Music for this movie was a success. Encouraged, Chetan Anand gave Jaidevji another opportunity for his next movie “Anjali” in 1957. The songs for this movie also became popular. But not until Dev Anand signed him to provide music for his film “Hum Dono”, Jaidev’s name, inspite of some successful movies, remained obscure. But songs of “Hum Dono” became a rage and movie was a big hit for Dev Saab and for Jaidev ji as well.

Surprisingly, inspite of string of successes he enjoyed with his movies, Jaidevji never got into the so called “big league” music director brackets. This may be partly because his music had so much influence of SD. Whereas RD blazed himself new trails even though he was also a long time assistant to SD, Jaidev ji remained close to providing Burmanesque style music. In the life span of little over 30 years in the film industry as a music director, Jaidevji composed music for some 40+ movies. During that span he won four Sur Singar Samsad awards. He also was a recepient of Lata Mangeshkar award from the Government of Madhya Pradesh. He won three National awards as the best music director for “Reshma Aur Shera (1971)”, “Gaman (1979)”, and “Ankahee (1984)”. Such an honor nobody ever received until recently A.R. Rahman was able to accomplish it.

Inspite of all the accolades and some really beautiful music created, Jaidev remained aloof and distant from the luminous filmworld and died in very poor health.

In the next few weeks I will try to capture some of the music Jaidevji created through these columns. I have some of his original album CDs and will upload from these.