Brahmanand Siingh says veteran radio jockey Amin Sayani's comments on All India Radio about RD Burman were his introduction to the legendary composer's work. "Every time he listed out the cast, it would be actors like Amitabh, or Rajesh Khanna, but the music was always by Pancham," says the filmmaker, who has spent a large part of his life creating works around Burman's work and times.

In 2008, he released a two-hour film, Pancham Unmixed, which won the National Award, and followed it up with Knowing Pancham in 2015, which had extra five-hour material surrounding the film. Burman is regarded as one of Bollywood's finest music directors, with almost 331 movies to his credit, including Saagar, Masoom, Sholay, Shaan, Teesri Manzil and 1942: A Love Story. "My granduncle and father once said in a conversation that it seemed like Amar Prem's music was made by SD [Pancham's father]. But that wasn't the case. Gradually, I got obsessed with Pancham's music, and started discovering the layers in it," says the 55-year-old, who was a fan of the Beatles when he was 15, but by the time he turned 20, realised that it was Hindi film music that encompassed it all—classical, Western and pop.