At a glance
Stay to the very end of a Hindustani classical concert and you will very likely hear the same raag. By long custom a mehfil, a gathering for music, ends with Bhairavi, whatever the hour. It is often called the queen of morning raags, but as the closing piece it overrides the clock.
Bhairavi uses all seven notes, going up and coming down, and flattens four of them: Re, Ga, Dha and Ni are komal. Those are the only notes that can be flattened, so Bhairavi lowers every one it can, keeping Ma natural (shuddha). Its scale is one of the ten parent scales, the Bhairavi thaat.
Don't confuse it with Bhairav, one letter shorter: a different, early-morning raag that flattens only Re and Dha.
In practice Bhairavi is roomy. Lighter treatments may bring in notes from outside the scale, and one writer on raags calls it unique among the major raags in embracing all twelve notes of the octave.
Beyond the concert hall it turns up in thumri (light classical song), bhajan, ghazal and, above all, film: more film songs are filed under Bhairavi on this site than under any other raag. Five stories from the films show how far it travels.
A farewell sung in the street (1938)
‘Baabul Mora, Naihar Chhooto Hi Jaaye’ is a Bhairavi thumri credited to Wajid Ali Shah, the 19th-century Nawab of Awadh, who composed under the name Akhtarpiya. Tradition holds that he wrote it when the British removed him from Lucknow: a bride's farewell to her father's house, standing for his own exile. What is known is that he reached Calcutta by steamer in May 1856 and spent the rest of his life there.
Playback singing was only just arriving when New Theatres made Street Singer (1938). For its climax, K. L. Saigal is said to have asked the director, Phani Majumdar, not to use a pre-recorded track, and to have sung ‘Baabul Mora’ live on the set, walking along the street with a harmonium slung from his neck; one telling adds that the orchestra followed him on a truck. It became the best-remembered version of the song.
Baabul Mora, Naihar Chhooto Hi Jaaye
Raag BhairaviStreet Singer (1938)
Music by Raichand Boral: the version Saigal is said to have sung live.
‘Every Bhairavi that Saigal touched’ (1942–44)
One critic went further, arguing that the greatest Bhairavi on record came from film rather than the classical stage. There has not been a greater exponent of the raag than Saigal, he wrote, ‘and this is not an opinion’. His examples included the bhajan ‘Madhukara Shyam Hamare Chor’ from Bhakta Surdas (1942) and ‘Aie Kitab-e-Taqdeer’ from My Sister (1944). Every Bhairavi that Saigal touched, he concluded, turned to gold.
Madhukara Shyam Hamare Chor
Raag BhairaviBhakta Surdas (1942)
A bhajan set by Gyan Dutt.
Aie Kitab-e-Taqdeer
Raag BhairaviMy Sister (1944)
Composed by Pankaj Mullick.
The film that ran for three and a half years (1943)
In Bombay Talkies' Kismet (1943), with music by Anil Biswas, Amirbai Karnataki sang the Bhairavi bhajan ‘Ab Tere Siva’. Months after its Bombay opening, it reached the Roxy in Calcutta on 24 September 1943 and ran there for more than three and a half years without a break, a record that stood for decades. It was the first Indian film to net ₹1 crore, and it made Ashok Kumar the first big superstar of Indian cinema.
Ab Tere Siva
Raag BhairaviKismet (1943)
Amirbai Karnataki's bhajan from the record-breaking Kismet.
A first Filmfare, by postal vote (1954)
The first Filmfare Awards were held on 21 March 1954 at the Metro Cinema in Bombay. The magazine's readers chose the winners by postal vote, and no nominations were announced. Baiju Bawra (1952) won two: Meena Kumari was the first Best Actress, and Naushad the first Best Music Director, for the Bhairavi song ‘Tu Ganga Ki Mauj’.
It was Naushad's first and only Filmfare award, in a career that by one count ran 65 years and 636 songs. As one account has it, the song was shot outdoors, on a river at Dahisar near Bombay.
Tu Ganga Ki Mauj Main Jamunaa Ka Dhaaraa
Raag BhairaviBaiju Bawra (1952)
The song behind the first Filmfare award for music.
A first song, a National Award (1978)
Muzaffar Ali's first film as director, Gaman (1978), follows a migrant from Uttar Pradesh who drives a taxi in Bombay. Its composer, Jaidev, won the National Award for Best Music Direction, and its ghazal ‘Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi, Raat Bhar’ was Chhaya Ganguly's first film song. It won her the National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer. She worked for 35 years at All India Radio and Doordarshan in Bombay.
Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi, Raat Bhar
Raag BhairaviGaman (1978)
Chhaya Ganguly's first film song, and her National Award.
The last word
One Bhairavi has gone further still, and it is not a film song. A three-and-a-half-minute recording of Kesarbai Kerkar singing ‘Jaat Kahan Ho’, made in Bombay in April 1953, is India's entry on the Voyager Golden Record, launched aboard the Voyager probes in 1977.
From a farewell sung in a street to a record sent into space, on film and off it, Bhairavi keeps doing what it does in the concert hall: it gets the last word.
Raags in this story