स्वरानंद-Raam-Laxman: (Vijay Patil)

 

Vijay Patil (born 16 September, 1942 at Nagpur), better known as Raamlaxman, is a composer, pianist, musician and accordionist, par excellence .

 

In the 1970s, Vijay Patil, started an orchestra during his youth, named ‘Ajay-Vijay’ (Ajay being his son’s name), and made his Orchestra quite a popular stage show in Nagpur and subsequently also in Mumbai. He was also a good composer and started including his own compositions in his stage shows.

 

It was a chance meeting that one of the then upcoming comedy film makers in Marathi, Dada Kondke saw his stage performance and approached him for his next movie ‘Pandu Hawaldar’. Vijay with his friend Ram, took up the assignment and adopted the screen name ‘Raamlaxman’. The movie and the music became super duper hit and Vijay’s association continued lifelong, till Dada Kondke passed away.

 

Raamlaxman’s first break in hindi, followed the success of ‘Pandu Hawaldar’ in the form of ‘Agent Vinod’. Unfortunately his partner Raam passed away before they could score the music for ‘Agent Vinod’. Vijay continued to use the Screen Name RaamLaxman, even after Raam (whose real name was Surendra), passed away. The songs became hits and some of them like ‘Sultana Sultana Mera Naam Hai Sultana’ have a recall value, even after nearly 5 decades.

 

Later, he did films with Manmohan Desai, Mahesh Bhatt, G.P.Sippy, Anil Ganguly and others. His favourite singers were Shailendra Singh and Usha Mangeshkar. Although he also frequently collaborated with Lata Mangeshkar and produced some of the biggest hits of his career, with LataDidi. He must be credited with introducing S.P. Balasubramaniam to Bollywood and making him the voice of Salman Khan.

 

Raamlaxman is most famous for his work with Rajshri Productions for Hindi films. He composed music for their hit films like Tarana, Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999).

 

In 1981, Raamlaxman collaborated with Ravindra Rawal for movie Hum Se Badkar Kaun, and its Song "Deva O Deva Ganpati Deva" got famous during that period. He has also given music for movies Woh Jo Hasina (1983), Deewana Tere Naam Ka (1987) and Aage Ki Soch (1987).

 

Vijay won the Filmfare award for best music director for his compositions for ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ and went on to be bestowed upon with Maharashtra government’s ‘Lata Mangeshkar Award for Lifetime Achievement’ in the field of music, announced every year on Mangeshkar’s birthday, comprising a cash prize of Rs.5 lakh and a citation.

In his over four-decades-long career, Patil has composed music for more than 150 films in Hindi, Marathi and Bhojpuri languages, including blockbusters such as ‘Maine Pyar Kiya’ and ‘Hum Apke Hain Kaun’, ‘Pandu Hawaldar’.

 

It’s a pleasure to play a composition from this very very distinguished Composer’s repertoire and pay a tribute to his talent and musical exploits.

Song played on accordion by Shirish Purohit click the link : Gunjane lage Hai Tarane   

Shirish Purohit