Guwahati: What gives Zubeen Garg’s iconic Assamese song Mayabini Ratir Bukut its distinctive character may have less to do with the singer’s vocal range and more with the precise way he controlled and coordinated different elements of his voice.
A new acoustic study published in the Journal of Voice has examined Garg’s rendition of the song to understand what sets it apart from other popular vocal performances.
The study, led by Kishore Dutta of Handique Girls’ College, Guwahati, analysed pitch, loudness, vocal resonance and the interaction between the voice and the vocal tract.
The researcher compared Mayabini Ratir Bukut with 11 other recordings featuring five prominent singers, Zubeen Garg, Bhupen Hazarika, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and KK.
The analysis found that Mayabini Ratir Bukut does not stand out because of an exceptionally high pitch or unusual acoustic profile. Instead, its character appears to emerge from how different vocal properties are coordinated and altered as the song progresses.
One of the key findings was a sustained relationship between fundamental frequency, or F0, and the first formant, F1—a major resonance of the human vocal tract. Among the four formants examined, F1 was the only one to show a consistent relationship with pitch across all three sections of the song.
The study also detected repeated instances of formant tuning, in which the resonances of the vocal tract move closer to the upper harmonics of a sung note. Although this phenomenon has been widely associated with classical and operatic singing, the study found evidence of it in Garg’s continuous popular-song performance.
Another feature emerged in the song’s middle section, where formant frequencies were particularly prominent. At the same time, loudness, pitch and spectral roughness did not reach their highest levels together.
According to the study, this suggests that Garg did not rely on a single dramatic increase in volume or pitch to create intensity. Instead, he appears to have built the song’s vocal impact through the carefully timed interaction of several acoustic elements.
When all 12 recordings were compared, Mayabini Ratir Bukut was not found to be an obvious outlier in terms of timbre or overall dynamics. Its distinction was more closely associated with the timing, coordination and consistency of Garg’s vocal control.
The researcher, however, cautions that the study does not attempt to explain why the song has had such a strong emotional or cultural resonance among listeners. Rather, it provides an acoustic account of how Garg performed the song and points towards the possibility of studying popular singing through a combination of phonetics, acoustics, musicology, and linguistics.
The paper, titled “Formant and Source-Filter Coordination in a Culturally Iconic Vocal Performance: Mayabini Ratir Bukut,” was accepted for publication on August 17, 2026, in the Journal of Voice.