From Canyons & deserts to the
bank of a river – sometimes the inspirations move across the whole geography - like this particular song.
Ol Turkey Buzzard, Ol Turkey
Buzzard Flyin, Flyin high, He's just waiting Buzzard just a-waiting Waiting for something down below the dive
Old
Turkey Buzzard, sung by Jose Feliciano & composed by Quincy Jones,
was the theme score from Mckenna’s Gold, running in background through
the movie as a strand. Sounding ominous in its structure, it was made
more so with its lyrics and powerful visuals of desert & canyons.
Pancham, always ready to experiment with whatever inspired him, took
the basic structure of its two lines, made it into a harmony, composed a
tune around it and turned it on its head totally.
Rather than
the strong visuals of a desert, this harmony arrangement managed to
convert it into a soft party composition - suiting perfectly the lyrics.
Interestingly, while the basic theme runs like a mukhda, there is not
really a definite mukhda in the song. The song starts with a stanza and
continues into three different stanzas – each of them ending in a way
into a tune that is akin to a mukhda.
It was an experiment that
went right and created a really hummable composition. However, since
the movie tanked, despite it being the last movie of Meena Kumari, this
excellent composition, along with the other songs, never got their
recognition.
Here it is now, from the movie – Gomti Ke Kinare,
picturised on Mumtaz & Samir Khan (brother of Firoze & Sanjay
Khan) – with lyrics from Majrooh (whose birth anniversary I missed out
on 1st October).
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