Fabled collectors of vintage records discuss road ahead

They were part of a panel discussion at a meeting of RMIM, a worldwide group of vintage music lovers celebrating their silver jubilee. The online group has earlier met offline in cities across the US, as also in Chennai and Bengaluru in India.

V A K Rangarao, whose bungalow in Chennai is a treasure house of about 52,000 vinyl records, said he had been approached by various organisations seeking to archive select portions of his collection. One wanted just his classical music records, and another his theatre records, but for him, the thread that binds the many languages and genres of Indian music would be lost if the collection were divided.

“I am not interested in that,” said the 78-year-old collector of records in 42 languages. “And only an institution can take up the responsibility of keeping the work going, and not any individual.”

Chiranjeev Singh, multilingual scholar, connoisseur, and personal friend of many celebrated musicians, argued for academic support for vintage Indian music produced between 1935 and 1955, describing it as rich and worthy of study. “If Rabindra Sangeet with 300 songs is respected as an independent genre, why not vintage film music?” he said.

Discernment was a talking point, with Singh underlining its subjective nature, and at the same time recognising the importance of shared ideas of good taste. To illustrate his point, he described to all-round agreement how RMIM was broadly averse to Laxmikanth-Pyarelal and R D Burman: the group considers them less sophisticated than, say, Anil Biswas, Madan Mohan or C Ramachandra. In fact, the group has comprises many A R Rahman sceptics.

Singh’s observations sparked impassioned arguments about old songs versus new, and many said contemporary numbers had no aesthetic or recall value. Suresh Chandvankar, the illustrious collector from Mumbai, was a dissenting voice. He said, “I don’t agree. It is just that we have grown old.”

During the tea break, Dinesh Shah, whom ghazal singer Ram Nagaraj described as a ‘living encyclopaedia of old Hindi music,’ dismissed the apologists for new music. In his view, Jai ho, the song featured in a film that won Rahman an Oscar, shows how low composing standards have sunk.

Music collector A Parthasarathy from Mysuru played 16 tracks composed by C Ramachandra, with Kalyan Kolachala adding to the presentation with fascinating details about their context.