Ask a student of Hindustani music which raag they learned first, and the answer is very often Yaman, an evening raag with vast room for alap, the slow opening, and taan, fast runs of notes. It looks easy: there are no komal, or flattened, notes, and every note is natural except Ma, raised to the tivra Ma that gives Yaman its bright colour.
But the simplicity is deceptive. One writer on film music has argued that beauty in Yaman takes real skill and sensitivity, which is why composers such as Roshan gave it some of their best work.
Fitting, then, that a beginner's raag runs through so many beginnings, and endings, in Hindi film music.
One raag, many names
Yaman also goes by Kalyan, Iman, Aiman and Eman. Some authorities treat Kalyan as the Sanskrit name and Yaman as the Persian one; others keep them apart. Yaman-Kalyan adds an occasional shuddha, or natural, Ma, and in Carnatic music the same seven notes make Kalyani. By one account the raag is first mentioned in writing only in the late 16th century. Keep the name Kalyan in mind: it returns with Pakeezah (1972).
1963: a first film
Before Parasmani (1963), Laxmikant–Pyarelal had worked as musicians under other composers. Babubhai Mistri's fantasy was their first released film, and two of its songs, ‘Woh Jab Yaad Aaye’ and ‘Hansta Hua Noorani Chehra’, became superhits and made the year-end list of radio's best-loved countdown of film songs. Parasmani also began the duo's long partnership with Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi.
Woh Jab Yaad Aaye
Raag YamanParasmani (1963)
One of the two superhits from the duo's first released film.
1968: a first for Hindi film music
Govind Saraiya's black-and-white Saraswatichandra (1968), from Govardhanram Tripathi's 19th-century Gujarati novel, had songs by Kalyanji–Anandji and the lyricist Indeevar, ‘Chandan Sa Badan’ among them. The score won the National Film Award for Best Music Direction, a category only a year old: it had first gone to K. V. Mahadevan, for the Tamil film Kandan Karunai (1967), so this was its first Hindi winner.
Chandan Sa Badan
Raag YamanSaraswatichandra (1968)
Two versions, by Mukesh and by Lata Mangeshkar; one listing puts both in Yaman.
1972: the score that outlived its composer
Kamal Amrohi began shooting Pakeezah in 1956, and it took about fifteen years, stalled by his separation from Meena Kumari in 1964. Ghulam Mohammed composed its songs, among them ‘Mausam Hai Aashiqana’, which one account places in Raag Kalyan. But he died on 17 March 1968, four years before the film opened in February 1972.
Distributors urged Amrohi to bring in a more commercial composer. He refused, reportedly saying he could not betray, after his death, the man who had given him such melodies. Naushad finished the two remaining pieces and the background score, and the soundtrack became one of the best-selling of the 1970s.
At the 1973 Filmfare awards the music prize went instead to Shankar–Jaikishan for Be-Imaan. Pran, best supporting actor for the same film, refused his award: by one account because the music prize should have gone to Ghulam Mohammed, by another because he preferred Pakeezah's background score.
Mausam Hai Aashiqana
Raag YamanPakeezah (1972)
One account files it under Raag Kalyan: Yaman by its older name.
1975: a song from a banned film
Gulzar's Aandhi (1975) opened in February amid rumours that its politician heroine was modelled on Indira Gandhi; some exhibitors advertised it as ‘See Indira Gandhi in Aandhi’. Then came the Emergency and a ban: on 12 July, despite heavy censorship, a newspaper ran the front-page headline ‘Screening on Aandhi banned’. The film returned only after the 1977 elections, on state television.
Its duet ‘Is Mod Se Jaate Hai’, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar for R. D. Burman, was shot at Pahalgam in Kashmir. One reading hears a major-scale tune whose added sharp Ma, the tivra Madhyam, recalls Yaman; this site also files it under Pahadi.
Is Mod Se Jaate Hai
Raag YamanAandhi (1975)
By one reading, the raised Ma inside its major-scale tune is the hint of Yaman.
1994: a last score
By the early 1990s few producers wanted R. D. Burman. Vidhu Vinod Chopra has often said the record company HMV told him it would not pay if he signed Burman for 1942: A Love Story (1994). He went ahead anyway.
Burman died of a heart attack on 4 January 1994, before the film's release and with the music unfinished; Lata Mangeshkar re-recorded the female version of ‘Kuch Na Kaho’ as a tribute. The score, with its Yaman song ‘Yeh Safar Bahut Hai Kathin’, won him a posthumous Filmfare award for Best Music Director.
2015: still winning
Anu Malik's score for Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), a Yash Raj film set in Haridwar in 1995, was his first with the studio. Its ‘Moh Moh Ke Dhaage’, sung separately by Papon and Monali Thakur, won twice at the 63rd National Film Awards: Best Lyrics for Varun Grover and Best Female Playback Singer for Monali Thakur. The film was named Best Hindi Film.
Moh Moh Ke Dhaage
Raag YamanDum Laga Ke Haisha (2015)
One song, two National Awards: for Varun Grover's words and for Monali Thakur's voice.
2019: from a station platform to a studio
The newest beginning came from an old song: Laxmikant–Pyarelal's ‘Ek Pyar Ka Nagma Hai’ from Shor (1972), filed here under Yaman and also under Kirwani. In 2019 a passer-by filmed Ranu Mondal, a woman in her late fifties, singing it at Ranaghat railway station in West Bengal and posted it online.
Within two weeks she was being called the ‘Lata of Ranaghat’, and by late August Himesh Reshammiya had recorded her singing a new film song.
Ek Pyar Ka Nagma Hai
Raag YamanShor (1972)
Forty-seven years on, the tune took a station singer into a recording studio.
Back to the beginning
From Laxmikant–Pyarelal's first film to R. D. Burman's last, from the first National Award for a Hindi film score to a singer found on a railway platform, Yaman keeps turning up at the start and the finish. Not bad for the raag you learn on day one.
Open the Yaman page and play its notes going up: listen for the one raised note, Ma, and for Ga, the raag's most important note, its vadi.
Raags in this story