Bappi Lahiri, an Indian movie composer who mixed the melodrama of Bollywood movie plots with the flamboyance of disco’s digital orchestra sound, setting off a pop craze in India that earned him the nickname “Disco King,” died on Feb. 15 in Mumbai. He was 69.
The trigger was obstructive sleep apnea, mentioned his son, Bappa, who was his arranger, supervisor and bandmate.
Mr. Lahiri was an up-and-coming pop musician in 1979 when he traveled to the USA to play a collection of gigs for Indian American audiences. Whereas there, he toured nightclubs in San Francisco, Chicago and New York and caught the ultimate months of American disco fever. In New York, he purchased a Moog synthesizer, a number of drum machines and a lot different music tools that it crammed two taxis.
On returning residence, his experiments with these devices culminated with a career-making soundtrack to successful film, “Disco Dancer” (1982). It was a musical in a disco fashion — insistent bass traces underneath hovering horns and strings — and a declaration of affection to the style. In a single scene, a frenzied crowd and the protagonist, a celebrity disco musician, spell out the phrase “disco” and chant it.
“Disco Dancer,” which traces the rise to stardom of a younger road urchin named Jimmy and his fights with a household of thuggish plutocrats, grew to become the primary Indian film to earn 1 billion rupees (about $230 million in at the moment’s {dollars}), and its soundtrack helped gas disco mania in India.
It additionally supercharged the profession of its sad-eyed, bouffant-wearing star, Mithun Chakraborty, and produced two of the catchiest dance tunes within the historical past of Indian pop, every sung by Mr. Chakraborty onscreen: “I Am a Disco Dancer” and “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja.”
Lengthy after the film was proven in theaters, these songs endure throughout India. At weddings they’re recognized to encourage everybody from growing old aunties to buddies of the groom to boogie onto the dance flooring.
Mr. Lahiri would undergird lots of his disco songs with a recognizably Indian melody, and he quickly realized that he had hit on a profitable system, resulting in Eighties hits like “I Am a Road Dancer,” “Tremendous Dancer” and “Disco Station Disco.” He earned a spot within the Limca E-book of Information, which notes worldwide achievements by Indians, by recording the soundtracks to 37 motion pictures in 1987 alone.
He additionally developed a mega-celebrity’s vogue sense impressed by his boyhood reverence for Elvis. The look included tinted sun shades worn indoors and out, velvet observe fits and glossy jackets swaddling his pillowy bulk, and a mound of gold jewellery hanging from his neck.
“I keep in mind as soon as a person refused to just accept that I’m Bappi Lahiri,” he as soon as advised The Instances of India, “as a result of I used to be sporting a coat to guard myself from chilly and he couldn’t see my gold chain.”
Bappi Lahiri was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on Nov. 27, 1952. His dad and mom, Aparesh Lahiri and Bansur (Chakravarty) Lahiri, have been singers who met whereas performing for the general public broadcaster All India Radio. As a baby Bappi confirmed expertise enjoying the tabla, a standard Indian drum, and, on the advice of the favored singer Lata Mangeshkar, he studied with the tabla grasp Samta Prasad.
His household moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) when he was a youngster to additional Bappi’s profession. There he discovered a robust ally within the household’s religious guru, Amiya Roy Chowdhury, who gave him a letter of introduction to the Bollywood star Dev Anand.
Mr. Lahiri’s decades-long composing profession ranged past disco to embody Indian classical types like ghazal as nicely. In all, he’s believed to have composed about 9,000 songs that appeared in 600 or so motion pictures. In his best intervals he would guide 4 studios in a single day and use as many as 100 musicians for one music.
Along with his son, Mr. Lahiri is survived by his spouse, Chitrani (Mukherjee) Lahiri, whom he married in 1977; his mom; a daughter, Rema Bansal; and two grandsons.
Although curiosity in disco had light in the USA by the point Mr. Lahiri gained fame, he grew to become a central a part of the disco phenomenon elsewhere, notably the Soviet Union. “Disco Dancer” was among the many hottest movies in the united statesS.R., and Mr. Lahiri’s songs nonetheless function requirements in musical exhibits on Russian tv.
Through the 2018 soccer World Cup in Russia, a journalist with India’s Specific Information Service discovered the nation filled with “Jimmy” followers.
“Everybody is aware of him the place I come from,” one native fan, recognized solely as Yuri, was quoted as saying as he took out his telephone. “Let me present you which of them of his songs is my favourite.”