Lagaan
It is music that begins with a song gazing up at the sky over a drought-stricken village, binds eleven people of different castes into a single team, and ends with a prayer before the decisive match.
At a glance 🔭💭
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The makers ⏳🌊
- ComposerA. R. Rahman
He wrote the six songs and the background score, winning India's National Film Award for Best Music Direction.
- LyricsJaved Akhtar
He set words to the finished melodies and won the National Film Award for Best Lyrics for “Ghanan Ghanan” and “Radha Kaise Na Jale.”
- DirectorAshutosh Gowariker
Wrote and directed the story, and chose the film's songs from the countless melodies Rahman played.
- ProducerAamir Khan
Also played the lead, Bhuvan, in a first venture as producer.
- StarringGracy Singh
Played Gauri, the village girl who loves Bhuvan.
- StarringRachel Shelley
Played Elizabeth, the Englishwoman who teaches the villagers cricket.
I. A village built in the desert
(Concept) “Lagaan” is a Hindi-language film written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. Set in British India in 1893, it tells of drought-stricken farmers who wager on a cricket match against a British officer to win exemption from the land tax (lagaan). Aamir Khan, at first skeptical of a sports film, was won over upon hearing the finished script, and the picture became Khan's first production. The village set was built near Bhuj, in the Kutch region of Gujarat. (Composer) The music was by A. R. Rahman. A native of Chennai who made a film-music debut with “Roja” in 1992, Rahman moved between the South Indian and Mumbai film industries and transformed the sound of Indian film music. Rahman recalled that the hardest part of the job was turning the air of an era into sound, and that earlier experience with period pieces in “Iruvar,” “1947: Earth” and “Zubeidaa” had helped. (Process) According to a 2002 Filmfare interview, five of the songs came in about 6 weeks; the sixth was written in a single week after a three-month break, and the background score took roughly another two months. Javed Akhtar set the lyrics only after the music was finished. For the recordings Rahman brought in the sarangi maestro Ustad Sultan Khan, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, creator of the mohan veena, the percussionist Sivamani, and harpists from Britain. (Integration) That the songs and dances move within the story instead of interrupting it was noted by the “Los Angeles Times” on the film's release. Just as the songs drove the plot in “Dreamgirls” earlier in this series, each song in “Lagaan” carries one knot of the story.
II. The rain that does not come
(Drought) The film opens on parched earth. The farmers of a village called Champaner have not seen rain for years, yet they must still pay taxes to the British garrison and to the local raja who leans on it. At the center of the story stands Bhuvan, a young man of the village, and beside him Gauri, the girl who has long held him in her heart. (Clouds) One day dark clouds gather in the sky. The villagers drop their work, gaze upward, and sing and dance. The song that flows through this scene is “Ghanan Ghanan.” Aamir Khan remembers it as the first of the film's songs to be heard, calling it the song that establishes from the very start that the whole film is a story about water. (Letdown) The song swells with the joy of coming rain, then ends as the clouds simply drift away. What remains when the dance is over is the same dry ground. Because the song displays that joy in full and then takes it back, the audience comes to know in their bodies what this village is waiting for. (Foreshadowing) This single song lays down the film's great question: when will the rain come, and can the village hold out until then? That question carries through to the final scene. Gowariker recalled that instead of offering a single tune, Rahman played nearly three hours of music and had the director choose; the song's quick opening melody was picked out in just that way.
Seeing dark clouds, the village bursts into song and dance as one, but the rain never falls. The first song settles what the whole film is waiting for.
- The rushing opening melody and percussion sound like the movement of a sky where clouds are gathering. Gowariker said this melody was picked out of the three hours of music Rahman played.
- The call-and-response structure, with several singers trading lines, gives the sense that not one person but the whole village is singing. Udit Narayan, Sukhwinder Singh, Alka Yagnik, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan and a chorus took part.
- As Aamir Khan put it, the song swells with the joy of coming rain and ends as the clouds pass by. The moment that joy breaks at its peak is the film's first piece of foreshadowing.
- Javed Akhtar won the National Film Award for Best Lyrics for this song and “Radha Kaise Na Jale.”
III. Gathering the eleven
(The wager) When the villagers come to plead for lower taxes, the British officer Captain Russell proposes a wager. If the village wins a cricket match, the whole region will be exempt from taxes for 3 years; if it loses, it will pay three times over. Bhuvan accepts the bet without consulting anyone, and the village resents him for it. (Persuasion) Among people who have never touched a ball or a bat, Bhuvan gathers his team one by one. The song that leads this passage is “Mitwa.” The word, meaning 'friend,' was not originally meant to be in the song. According to Javed Akhtar, Rahman asked for a single word that would catch the ear, and the word came out of that request. (Structure) The song alternates between gently coaxing passages and a forceful, bursting chorus. It mirrors the sequence of persuasion, first speaking to the hesitant, then calling on them to come along. Bhuvan's vocals were sung by Udit Narayan, who won the National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer for this song. (Boundaries) The team does not come together easily. Deva, a Sikh who once served in the British army; Ismail, a Muslim; and Kachra, from an untouchable caste the village has long shunned, join one after another. The scene in which the village splits in two over accepting Kachra shows that the film speaks not only of cricket but of the walls within Indian society.
The song for the passage in which Bhuvan draws the hesitant villagers onto the team one by one.
- The whole song leans on a single word, mitwa, meaning 'friend,' which arose when Rahman asked for one word that would linger in the ear. It serves as the short catch that makes the entire song memorable, in other words a hook (hook).
- Quietly coaxing passages alternate with a forceful, bursting chorus. This rise and fall does much to shape the song's impression.
- Akhtar said that what captured both the old feeling suited to a period piece and the ears of today's audience was Rahman's orchestral arrangement. The passages where strings layer over folk rhythms are worth a listen.
- Udit Narayan won the National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer for this song.
IV. The hearts of two women
(An ally) An unexpected ally appears. Captain Russell's sister Elizabeth, believing her brother's conduct unjust, secretly teaches the villagers the rules of cricket. Between two people who can barely understand each other, feelings grow along with the cricket, and Gauri watches this Englishwoman with uneasy eyes. (Festival) At a village festival honoring the god Krishna, “Radha Kaise Na Jale” unfolds. In the song Radha, having seen Krishna frolicking with other women, demands to know how she could help being jealous; it is a lovers' quarrel exchanged in the garb of myth. Elizabeth watches as Bhuvan and Gauri, dressed in yellow, dance. The jealousy in the song maps directly onto the relationship among the three. (Play) Gowariker named this song a personal favorite above all others. Over a playful rhythm, Asha Bhosle's voice moves between sulking and laughter. Javed Akhtar won the National Film Award for Best Lyrics for this song together with “Ghanan Ghanan.” (Dream) In the following “O Rey Chhori,” Elizabeth's feelings take the stage. The voices of Bhuvan·Gauri, sung in Hindi, and the voice on Elizabeth's side, sung in English, run side by side within a single song. The scene in which two languages coexist in one song shows both that two people from different worlds share the same feeling and the distance between them.
Amid the dancing of the Krishna festival, Radha's jealousy merges with Gauri's heart, and Elizabeth looks on.
- It rests loosely on Abheri·Bhimpalasi, among the ragas, the melodic modes of Indian classical music. It is a mode colored with a longing suited to the evening hours.
- Asha Bhosle and Udit Narayan spar and parry like Radha and Krishna. The song itself takes the form of a quarrel.
- Gowariker named this song a personal favorite above all others. Akhtar recounted how a married friend, a doctor, phoned to say the lovers' quarrel in the song sounded remarkably modern.
- The mythic love triangle mirrors exactly the relationship among the three on screen. In effect, the song voices the feelings the characters cannot speak.
The passage where Elizabeth's heart becomes song, with Hindi and English flowing side by side in a single number.
- The heart of it is a bilingual structure, with English phrases breaking into a Hindi song. Vasundhara Das sings the English lines, giving a separate voice to the character from another world.
- According to Rahman, this melody was originally a much slower piece written for Rahman's own album “Maa Tujhe Salaam.” When Aamir Khan found it lacking, the tempo was pushed up.
- Only Javed Akhtar appears in the official credits, but Aamir Khan revealed that the English lyrics were written by Akhtar's children, Farhan·Zoya Akhtar.
- The texture of a Western dance tune alternates with Indian melody, as if depicting at once the pull and the distance between the two.
V. The night before the match
(Training) As match day draws near, the village team slowly polishes its clumsy moves. Gowariker said that “Chale Chalo” had to show the moment when the team finally becomes one before the match. Rahman sang it himself and built it on raga Jog, a melodic mode of Indian classical music. (Loneliness) Though the song presses forward like a march, a strange loneliness runs beneath it. Gowariker said there is solitude and melancholy in Rahman’s music and voice. Even as it calls on everyone to walk together, the song never forgets the weight of drought, hunger and a tripled tax. Javed Akhtar put exactly that predicament into the lyrics. (Prayer) On the eve of the decisive match, the village stands before God. “O Paalanhaare” is a prayer led by the voice of Lata Mangeshkar, spoken in the simple manner of one who entrusts oneself to a protector. Akhtar called it the hardest song he had ever written: having no faith himself, he had to find that innocence and surrender within. (Stillness) The music of this chapter does not swell. The last night before the match is filled not with roars but with a low prayer, and the air, stilled in this way, makes the long match of the next chapter sound all the larger. The quiet gaps left between songs are also part of the sound this film has calculated.
Sung by Rahman himself, it accompanies the scene where the team finally becomes one before the match.
- It is built on raga Jog, a melodic mode of Indian classical music. Even as it strides forward like a march, a lonely color lingers somewhere within.
- Rahman’s own voice leads it. Gowariker said his music and voice are steeped in solitude and melancholy, and that darker grain overlays a song that vows victory.
- It is the sixth song, finished in a single week after the first five were written and three months had passed. At first it carried a placeholder phrase that merely held the place of lyrics, and Akhtar put “Chale Chalo” in its stead.
- This title later became the title of a documentary about the making of “Lagaan.”
A song of prayer, as the village stands before God on the eve of the decisive match.
- Lata Mangeshkar’s clear voice stands in front, with Udit Narayan, Sadhana Sargam and a chorus supporting her. Rahman said he brought Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle onto this album because he wanted a sound that would not age with time.
- Javed Akhtar called this the hardest song he had ever written. It needed purity and simplicity rather than craft, he said.
- The accompaniment is pared to a minimum and the voice fills the space. Akhtar said that even without knowing the words, this music sounds like a prayer wherever you hear it.
- This stillness, placed just before the roar of the match, makes the tension of the next chapter all the greater.
VI. The three-day match
(The match) A large share of the film’s second half is given over to a cricket match lasting three days. There are almost no songs; the noise of the crowd, the crack of ball on bat and Rahman’s score carry this long stretch. “Lagaan” was shot with sync sound, recording the sound on location — rare for a Hindi film at the time — and its sound designers, H. Sridhar and Nakul Kamte, won the National Film Award for audiography. (Cracks) The tide of the match does not turn all at once. The village team is shaken by the unfamiliar game, and cracks open within the team itself. At every crisis, fragments of melody from the earlier songs glint through the score. The feeling stored up in earlier chapters is summoned back without a word. (Sky) The question that “Ghanan Ghanan” left hanging — when will the rain come? — rises again at the match’s end. Approaching the final moments, the music gradually holds its breath, pinning the audience to every ball. What the ending is, we will not reveal here. Let it only be said that the film’s beginning and end look up at the same sky. (Afterglow) The story is closed by Amitabh Bachchan’s narration. “Lagaan” was nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the album was counted among the year’s biggest hits. The theme on the album, “Lagaan... Once Upon a Time in India,” true to a title that sounds like the telling of an old tale, gathers into one piece the mood that remains after the film has ended.
A theme that takes the film’s subtitle as its title, gathering the mood of the whole story into one piece.
- Anuradha Sriram’s voice and the chorus create the mood of an old tale being told. It suits the title’s words, “once upon a time in India.”
- It is worth listening for how Indian instruments such as the sarangi (a bowed Indian string instrument) and the mohan veena (an Indian slide string instrument adapted from the guitar) blend with a Western orchestra. Sultan Khan and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt took part in the album.
- Heard side by side with “Waltz for a Romance,” the instrumental also on the album, it lets you compare where and how much Rahman blended in the grain of Western classical music.
- The album ranked 44th on Amazon.com’s list of the 100 greatest world music albums of all time.
Lesser-known stories
Elizabeth’s song “O Re Chhori” was not originally written for “Lagaan.” In a 25th-anniversary conversation, Rahman revealed that the melody had been a much slower song written for his album “Maa Tujhe Salaam.” When Aamir Khan found it lacking beside the love song of another film due out at the same time, the tempo was raised. Aamir Khan has said the English lyrics were written by Farhan Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar, who went uncredited. It is a story the official credits alone would never tell. The title “Chale Chalo” was originally a placeholder phrase. Gowariker and Aamir Khan had grown fond of its sound and asked to keep it, but Javed Akhtar refused and changed it to the present words. Those words became the title of the making-of documentary “Chale Chalo: The Lunacy of Film Making,” made by Satyajit Bhatkal, who had worked on the production team. Bhatkal said he did not include a single shot from “Lagaan” itself in the documentary. By the time Rahman was working on “Lagaan,” Andrew Lloyd Webber had already entrusted him with the musical “Bombay Dreams.” The collaboration had been announced at a press conference in Mumbai in March 2000. A period film score and a London West End stage score were thus being made side by side, at the same time, in one man’s studio. “Bombay Dreams” opened in London in June 2002.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Playback singer
(Meaning) Playback means playing back sound that was recorded in advance. (In film and musical-theater music) Indian cinema has long followed the practice of actors not singing themselves but moving their lips to songs recorded beforehand by professional singers. The singer who performs the song is called a playback singer. In “Lagaan,” most of Bhuvan’s songs were sung by Udit Narayan. It is like a school play in which a friend sings from the wings while the actor onstage only mouths the words. In India these singers are as famous as the actors, and the National Film Awards have a separate category for playback singers. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, it more often means replaying something that was recorded or filmed.
Raga
(Meaning) Raga comes from a Sanskrit word meaning to dye or to color. The name carries the sense of music that tints the mind with a certain hue. (In film and musical-theater music) In Indian classical music, it is a melodic framework that fixes which notes are used, in what order they rise and fall, and which notes are stressed. Far more detailed than the Western major and minor, each raga has its own fitting time of day and emotion. “Radha Kaise Na Jale” is built on Abheri·Bhimpalasi, and “Chale Chalo” on Jog. Just as the same ingredients make a completely different broth depending on the blend of seasonings, the same notes feel entirely different under a different raga.
Background music (score)
(Meaning) Score originally meant the full score, gathering the parts of many instruments onto one page. (In film and musical-theater music) Unlike songs the characters sing themselves, it is the instrumental music laid behind the picture to build mood and tension. On “Lagaan,” after finishing the songs, Rahman spent about two more months on the background music alone. It is the score that carries long stretches with almost no songs, like the three-day cricket match. It does the same work as the background music in a game that turns tense when a boss fight begins. (Elsewhere) In sports it means points; on tests, a grade.
Sync sound
(Meaning) It means recording (錄音) sound at the same time (同時) as filming. (In film and musical-theater music) It is the method of recording the actors’ lines and surrounding sound together on location during the shoot. For a long time Hindi films commonly re-recorded dialogue in the studio after shooting, but “Lagaan” chose sync sound, preserving even the sound of wind and dust on location. The sound team won a National Film Award for this work. Think of how differently a sports-day video feels with the crowd’s live cheering left in, compared with one dubbed over with music afterward.
Hook
(Meaning) It is the English word for a hook — it comes from the idea of catching and holding the listener’s ear like a hook. (In film and musical-theater music) It is the short melody or word in a song that sticks most in the ear and that you keep singing along to. The word “Mitwa” came about when Rahman asked for a word that could serve as the song’s hook. When you hear a jingle once and hum it all day, the single phrase left in your head is the hook. (Elsewhere) In boxing, a hook is a punch thrown from the side with the arm bent.
Sarangi
(Meaning) A widely held explanation reads it as meaning “a hundred colors” in a North Indian language — that it can voice every emotion, like the human voice. (In film and musical-theater music) It is a North Indian string instrument played by drawing a bow across the strings. The body is carved from a single block of wood, and beneath the played strings lie many sympathetic strings, so the sound spreads softly. Because it sounds like a person sobbing or singing, it is often used in sad or wistful scenes. The sarangi master Ustad Sultan Khan took part in the “Lagaan” album. Just as a sound made in an empty gym strikes the walls and leaves a long echo, the sympathetic strings add a long resonance to the sound.