The slow burn of ‘Vida Karo’: the funeral song

Imtiaz Ali and AR Rahman have once again dropped a deeply moving track

KARACHI:

It is incredibly difficult to make simple music, and even harder to make simple music that stays with you for much longer. The music industry, like all others, is getting more and more result-oriented with every passing day. You have AI plugins, a diverse range of loops, and audio effects that help the producers fit the expectations of the market like a glove.

While this has made the standardisation of music much easier to replicate, it has also made it much harder to stand out from the crowd. It’s a classic popular market conundrum that a professor of mine had summed up like this: put a monkey in a cage, give him a movie camera, and he will eventually find the right button - but will it be a good film?

Music, like films, is as much a labour of love as it is a labour of technique, but it isn’t just techniques and tools that are available in abundance in today’s music world; we are also living in a world where an explicit display of emotion has become the norm, where it has become really important to “talk about” what “you are going through”, flooding every nook and cranny of the real and virtual world with emotional expression. As an artist, you not only feel helpless, but at times even jobless - unless you are AR Rahman who just dropped the swan song of the year in collaboration with Imtiaz Ali, hooking both the old and the young at the same time.

The swan song

Vida Karo begins with Chamkila’s cremation as we go back to key moments from his life through flames. Chamkila, played like a lost part of his conscious self by Diljit Dosanjh, is shown being welcomed by fans and foes alike, all of whom eventually bowed down to his music. But there's one medium shot where he casually glances into the screen with a smirk, almost suggesting that his death has allowed the filmmaker to break the fourth wall not just between the screen and the audience but also between life and death, flesh and soul. For those like me who have seen the film, this works like a haunting ending to a saga that was, until now, happening at a distance to a singer in Punjab. But as soon as Rahman and Arijit kick in, it magically becomes about you and your chance to either accept or let go of the fact that you too, like Chamkila, are responsible for the social contradictions that we all live with and Chamkila died with.

“Finally found a song for my funeral” wrote a listener under the official YouTube line of the video posted under on the Saregama YT channel. Another user saw the song as a means of therapy, writing, “To anybody reading this, I pray that whatever you are constantly stressing about gets better. May the dark thoughts, the overthinking, and the doubt exit your mind may clarity replace peace and calmness fill your life.” Sleuths on the internet have gone as far as to deconstruct the essence of the song, layer by layer. “This song touched four layers in this entire composition”, wrote another YT user. “First, sarcasm on society. Second is acceptance of every wrong and right he has done. Third is his unfulfilled hunger to stay longer in society and exploring and spreading his craft more. Fourth and last one is bidding goodbye to everyone including people who killed him, hated him and loved him. He is leaving everyone on the same good note as he is leaving everyone now.”

It is clear that we are living in times when fandom is loud and public, but it is phenomenal to have fandom extract so much meaning out of a text that could have been just another Arijit song. This also reflects how, once again, the simplicity of expression and the sweet space between Punjabi and Urdu where Vida Karo exists is intricately used by Irshad Kamil. The lyrical content and the sombre and subtle emotional flow of the song not only grow on you like a folktale you’ve heard again and again, but the odd aesthetic combo of Rahman, Arijit, and Kamil lifts it to an epic level that may remind you of kalaams such as Kheryaan De Naal and the reluctance to not transition on the other side of reality.

Rahman, the genius from the South

For those who haven’t watched the film and got absorbed by the song right away, I spoke to Abbas Ali Khan, a seasoned Pakistani musician who is not only an ardent Rahman fan but shines as someone who has command of Eastern and contemporary pop music.

“This is a classic case of using an old-style melodic structure when it’s really needed,” says Khan while speaking to The Express Tribune. “People have been trying to use old styles tarz to create something new, but mostly in vain. The whole Shammi Kapoor era music is trying to back a backdoor entry and slowly making a space for itself. We love it because it triggers our nostalgia, but the new audiences are loving it because they haven’t heard anything like this before.”

Khan also appreciates the simplicity of the song, or what he emphasises as the “perceived simplicity”.

“Of course, the simplicity is also a huge factor in the song, but it is mostly a perceived simplicity of the composition. Yes, you would hear places that would sound like replications of very RD Burman-style transitions, but the moment you see someone with a raw, untrained voice try to sing Vida Karo, you’ll realise it isn’t actually a simple song to sing.”

Whether the simplicity of Vida Karo is an illusion or a reality, the song has made its way through our hearts regardless. For Rahman, this isn’t something new. When offered a powerful plot, he never ceases to amaze with songs about mortality and separation, be it Luka Chupi from Rang De Basanti, or the much recent and contemporary Agar Tum Saath Ho from Tamasha.

The closest I can get to a song that tackles mortality with such aplomb and authority in the Pakistani context is Kaavish’s Bachpan. Similar to Vida Karo, the Kaavish song also takes place at a funeral, possibly of a friend, though Jaffar has never spoken openly about it. Bachpan relies as much on motifs of friendship as it relies on metaphors of mortality and the memories that make it worth accepting. Which is why you might see Bachpan play in a college farewell montage as well as to recall a lost friend on his or her anniversary, but Vida Karo will remain a funeral song till eternity.

Have a listen to Vida Karo here:

Bachpan by Kaavish:

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