As a superfan who has lived inside Pancham-da’s music for decades, my heart is full and tender on this sombre day. 32 years after he left us, Pancham-da’s music still arrives like a warm, remarkable memory, a voice that sketches whole films in a single phrase, a rhythm that makes the air around you move. I miss him the way one misses a brilliant elder brother who always knew how to make the world feel cinematic and musical.
Pancham-da as a filmmaker’s ear as per this excellent video posted, where Gulzar Saab’s words remind us that Pancham never treated music as an add‑on. He treated it as a lens through which a film could be seen. He listened to stories the way a director sees frames, not just beats and bars, but light, distance, and the unsaid. That rare ability to think in images made his scores more than songs: they were blueprints for scenes, mood maps that guided camera, actor, and editor toward a shared vision.
Music that invents the scene
Pancham-da’s spontaneity was legendary. In the middle of a recording he might ask about a river or a marketplace and then weave that detail into the arrangement, a boatman’s call, a distant bell, a scrape of oars. Those impulses were not gimmicks; they were sudden acts of imagination that turned a melody into a living place. As a listener, you don’t just hear the song, you see the river, smell the wet earth, feel the boat’s sway.
Scene Within the Music💎Hidden cinema behind every melody
Gulzar Saab’s insight that there was always a scene behind Pancham’s vocals is exactly why his music still directs images in our minds. A simple vocal inflection, a pause, a harmonic choice, each one carried a visual suggestion. Directors could take that suggestion and expand it; audiences could close their eyes and watch. That is the rarest kind of composition: music that contains its own storyboard.
Pancham-da's Innovative Sound Usage
- Pancham-da’s laboratory of sound 💎 He loved the peculiar, the tactile, the found object that could become an instrument. Those choices did more than decorate a track; they created atmosphere and narrative texture.
- Rhythmic magic 💎He would blend tabla and drum kits to create grooves that felt both rooted and modern, giving songs a heartbeat that could be rustic or urban at once.
- Everyday objects as effects 💎The opening breath of "Mehbooba Mehbooba" imagined from an empty beer bottle is a small miracle: a single, unexpected timbre that sets a whole world in motion.
- Nature conjured in studio 💎For rain he might use an asbestos sheet; for distant voices he’d layer human sounds until they became landscape. These choices made environments audible and immediate.
Pancham-da’s Method of Working
He insisted on hearing the whole film before composing. That discipline meant his music never floated free of context; it was always anchored to character, arc, and emotion. He knew where a lyric should land, where silence should breathe, and where a sound could carry a line of dialogue without a single word being spoken.
For him, a song was a scene, and a scene was a song.
As a devoted listener I find comfort and astonishment in Pancham-da’s work every time I press play. He taught us that music can be architecture, that a single sound can open a window onto a life.
On this January 4th, I light an imagined lamp for him not because he needs it, but because his music keeps lighting rooms inside me. If you haven’t listened to his scores with the attention they deserve, today is the day, listen not just with your ears but with your eyes, and heart, let Pancham-da show you the film only he could hear.
Forever Pancham 💖 Forever in the frame 💖
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