At a glance
Bhairav is a raag of daybreak, of the first prahar, the first three-hour watch of the day, roughly 6 to 9 am; one guide calls it the king of morning raags. By tradition it opens a concert at sunrise.
Its notes, in plain words: two flat (komal) notes, Re and Dha, and the rest natural. What makes it Bhairav is how those two are sung: swayed slowly, an andolan, not simply struck; one writer on raags calls the swaying Re on the way down its unmistakable signature. Its most important note, the vadi, is Dha, and reference books describe its mood as peaceful and serious.
Don't confuse it with Bhairavi, a different raag: Bhairavi flattens four notes, Re, Ga, Dha and Ni, while Bhairav keeps Ga and Ni natural. The two also sit at opposite ends of a concert: Bhairav opens at sunrise; by long custom Bhairavi closes, whatever the hour.
Bhairav also names a family of morning raags and one of the ten thaats, or parent scales. Its relatives Jogiya and Ramkali share the flat Re and Dha but hold them steadier, which is how musicians tell them apart.
On the concert stage you can hear it in dhrupad, as Nasir Aminuddin Dagar sang it; in Hindi film, as a bhajan, or devotional song, or a prayer that outgrew its film. Four stories from the 1950s show how.
The film the industry doubted (1952)
When Vijay Bhatt set out to make Baiju Bawra (1952), a film built on classical music, the industry doubted it would find an audience; friends, by one account, called him 'Viju Bawra', Viju the crazy. Naushad and the lyricist Shakeel Badayuni spent six months on the songs, and Bhatt, for financial reasons, cast Bharat Bhushan and Meena Kumari instead of the planned Dilip Kumar and Nargis.
The doubters were wrong: the film ran for 100 weeks, Meena Kumari won the first Filmfare award for Best Actress, and Naushad his only Filmfare.
Its Bhairav song, Lata Mangeshkar's 'Mohe Bhool Gaye Sanwariya', is probably the most famous Bhairav-based composition in the popular imagination, one critic wrote. Another listing hears traces of Kalingda in it: a lighter raag with Bhairav's exact notes, taken plainly, without the sway.
Mohe Bhool Gaye Sanwariya
Raag BhairavBaiju Bawra (1952)
Listen to Re and Dha: a slow sway is Bhairav's mark; plain, light touches lean towards Kalingda.
A song at the well (1956)
Jagte Raho (1956), produced by Raj Kapoor and directed by Sombhu Mitra and Amit Maitra, follows a thirsty villager (Kapoor). At the end he hears a beautiful song, follows it to a woman drawing water at a well (Nargis, in a cameo), and his thirst is finally quenched.
The song is Lata Mangeshkar's 'Jaago Mohan Pyare', Shailendra's words set by Salil Chowdhury in Bhairav: the film ends on the daybreak raag. In the Bengali version, Ek Din Raatre, it became 'Jago Mohan Pritam'.
The film travelled: it won the Crystal Globe grand prix at Karlovy Vary, in Czechoslovakia, in 1957, and drew, by one count, 33.6 million viewers in the Soviet Union in 1965.
Jaago, Mohan Pyare Jaago
Raag BhairavJagte Raho (1956)
Listen for the flat Re just above Sa, swayed rather than struck: much of Bhairav's dawn colour lives in that one note.
A prayer that outgrew its film (1957)
In V. Shantaram's Do Aankhen Barah Haath (1957), a jailer reforms six murderers by setting them to work on a run-down farm. The story came from a real open-prison experiment at Swatantrapur, in Aundh, told to Shantaram by the writer G. D. Madgulkar; the man behind it, Maurice Frydman, refused screen credit and, by one account, threatened to sue if his name appeared.
Shantaram is said to have fought a bull during filming and injured an eye, though his sight survived. The film won the Silver Bear at Berlin in 1958 and the National Award for Best Feature Film.
Its prayer, 'Ae Malik Tere Bande Hum', written by Bharat Vyas, composed by Vasant Desai and sung by Lata Mangeshkar, is set in Bhairav. It outgrew the film to become widely used as a prayer in Indian schools.
Ae Malik Tere Bande Hum
Raag BhairavDo Aankhen Barah Haath (1957)
Listen for Dha, Bhairav's most important note, and for the flat Re that answers it.
A first film and a bhajan (1957)
Musafir (1957), Hrishikesh Mukherjee's first film as director, from a story by Ritwik Ghatak, tells three stories, a marriage, a birth and a death, linked by one house: an early anthology film.
A year after Jagte Raho, Salil Chowdhury turned to Bhairav again for Lata Mangeshkar's bhajan 'Man Re Hari Ke Gun Ga', which one critic lists among Bhairav film songs. The same film has Dilip Kumar's first song as a singer, the duet 'Laagi Nahin Chhute Rama' with Lata Mangeshkar.
Mana Re Hari Ke Guna
Raag BhairavMusafir (1957)
Set it beside 'Jaago Mohan Pyare', a year older, and listen for the same two flat notes, Re and Dha.
Four very different films, one raag and its two flat notes. In a concert Bhairavi gets the last word; Bhairav, at sunrise, gets the first.