REMEMBERING BAPPI LAHIRI

DEVESH SHARMA OFFERS A BRIEF PROFILE OF THE PROLIFIC COMPOSER AND SINGER WHO PASSED AWAY RECENTLY

- DEVESH SHARMA

Veteran singer and music composer Bappi Lahiri passed away due to multiple health issues on February 15. He was 69 and breathed his last at Juhu’s CritiCare Hospital in Mumbai. He had survived COVID-19 last year but had not been keeping well all this while.

Bappi, who was known as the ‘Disco King’ among the masses, had a penchant for wearing gold jewellery and trademark black glasses. It’s said he idolised Elvis Presley, and was inspired by him to wear multiple gold chains. “I remember once a man refused to accept that I am Bappi Lahiri,” he once said in an interview to The Times Of India, “because I was wearing a coat to protect myself from the cold and he couldn’t see my gold chain.”

Bappi was said to be instrumental in making the disco genre popular in India. Some of his hit disco songs include Mausam hai gaane ka (Surakshaa 1979), Jimmy jimmy jimmy (Disco Dancer, 1982), I am a disco dancer (Disco Dancer, 1982), Yaar bina chain kahan re (Saaheb, 1985), Zoobi zoobi (Dance Dance, 1987), Tamma tamma loge (Thanedaar, 1990) and many more.

He had been making music since 1971, both as a singer and a composer. One can say that he has been active since the days of Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor to the era of Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh and Varun Dhawan. In between, his songs had been pictured on the likes of Amitabh Bachchan, Jitendra, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty to Govinda, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Sanjay Dutt and even Aamir Khan.