In Lagliya Godi Tujhi, the music and tune is as good and eclectic as Naal! The singing by Shashaa Tirupathi and Harshavardhan Wavre, in particular, is lovely, with both of them almost conversing in tune, sneaking up on each other stealthily. I loved that first interlude where after a ‘Tak tik tik’ phrase and a folk rhythm the shehnai’ish sound just dissolves without a tune! And that ending, with ‘Agagaga ga’ and ‘Arrere nai nai’ is a brilliant touch too. Darval Mavhacha is almost a Ajay-Atul song, with its jaunty rhythm pattern and almost chorus’ish singing all through, by Kavita Ram, Vivek Naik, Rahul Chitnis and Santosh Bote. In the antara, Prafullachandra unleashes the full effect of his brilliant tune, linking back to the mukhda with a lovely twist – in the mukhda, Kavita’s portion appears after the men’s chorus, while in the antara, it appears before!
Jasraj Joshi’s expressive singing is the highlight of Gondan Pirmach, that has an unusual and unpredictable flow like Darval Mavhacha. Rucha Bondre gives Jasraj excellent company as she opens and ends the song, along with the chorus. Naagin Dance, in comparison, is almost disappointingly conventional, but significantly more interesting than Prafullachandra hit dance song from Photocopy, Pipani. The punchy Marathi kuthu sound in Naagin Dance once again evokes Ajay-Atul’s music!
Shah-E-Makhdum Ali Vali too starts to sound conventional, like any other faux-Sufi ‘dargah’ song from Indian films, but after that start, the hook takes off ebulliently, and pitching it differently! Tula Futu De Kaagar closes the soundtrack in style, with an expansive orchestration and true to the rest of the album, with a melody that has a mind of its own! It sounds good, no doubt, with Manish Rajgire and Amruta Subhash excellent singing with Prafullachandra playing around with his tune to impressive effect.
AV Prafullachandra has been producing interesting enough music in the recent past – the 2 songs from Photocopy, Zhala Bobhata and Chandu Shikari. But 2018’s Naal was perhaps the first sign that something had changed with the composer – his music had a confident, ambitious sound, almost on par with Ajay-Atul. That same sound is all over Kaagar too. This is a composer worth looking forward to!
Listen to the songs on YouTube:
