Nand nandan bilmaai
Posted on: January 28, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
January 28th is the birth day of playback singer Suman Kalyanpur. She is a living example of how the career of a talented singer can be marred by a close resemblance of the voice of the numero uno singer in the field, in her case Lata Mangeshkar. Naturally, film industry preferred the reigning queen rather than giving enough opportunity to Suman Kalyanpur to prove her worth. She was mostly used as a substitute for Lata Mangeshkar when the latter was not available for recording the songs. Alternatively, she would get the singing assignments in low budget films. In the circumstances, I thought that she would have utilised her spare time in recording many NFSs. I find that even in respect of NFSs, Suman Kalyanpur is lagging in numbers in comparison to other top playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh etc. Was she really interested in pursuing playback singing career ? She is known to be a very private and low profile person. Only those who were close to her could get to know her mind. It took Ameen Sayani more than 40 years to persuade her to give an interview for a radio programme. Subsequently, she has given a couple of interviews through which we have come across some more information about her singing career.
In one such interview, she said that she had not really pursued her singing career seriously as there were some family constraints. She was married in 1958 to Ramanand Kalyanpur who had been brought up in a joint family. This required her to devote more time for the family. Then she was not keen on giving playback for cabarats, mujras etc and for songs where lyrics or visuals could have offended her sensibilities and upset her joint family. Later in 1976-77, due to her husband’s health problem, she could not take up many offers of playback singing. She maintains that she accepted the filmy and non filmy singing assignments only when offers came to her. Otherwise she was happy with her family life. All these events point to the fact that at some point of time in her career she decided not to pursue her playback singing career seriously on account of both the internal and extraneous reasons. However she occasionally took part in musical concerts both in India and abroad.
I observed that in all these interviews, there was not a direct or indirect reference to her singing career cut short allegedly by her senior playback singers. All she said was that she believed in destiny. I recalled watching an interview which Lata Mangeshkar gave to a TV Channel (probably on her 80th birthday). When the interviewer asked her a pointed question about the allegation that she prevented the upcoming female singers from getting playback singing assignments, she brushed off the allegation by saying that she had so many singing assignments at that time that she was unable to cope up with them. In some cases, she even suggested the music directors to take some other playback singers. In this context, she gave an instance of a music director who used to tell the prospective playback singers that he could not take them as it could invite the wrath from Lata Mangeshkar. When she came to know of this, she confronted the music director. He told her that he was getting lots of pressure from a few prospective playback singers through some influential quarters and to prevent such pressures, he devised this excuse. Lata Mangeshkar believed that this instance was the starting point for the media to speculate about the allegation. Despite this clarification, the speculation about her role in stalling the playback singing careers of a few singers still goes on in both print media and on internet.
Within the internal and external constraints, Suman Kalyanpur did sing many unforgettable solos and duet songs for Hindi films. She also recorded NFSs in almost all the major regional languages. In Hindi NFSs, she sang mostly the devotional songs. I have chosen one of her non-filmy Meera bhajans ‘nand nadan bilmaai’ (1970) for discussion. The song was set to music by Shyam Sharma. This bhajan is one more example of a wafer thin difference between the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Suman Kalyanpur.
With this NFS, we wish Suman Kalyanpur many many happy returns of the day.
Song-Nand nandan bilmaai (Suman Kalyanpur NFS)(1970) Singer-NFS, Lyrics-Meerabai, MD-Shyam Sharma
Lyrics
aa aa aa aa
aa aa aa aa
nand nandan bilmaai
badraa ne gheri maai
maai ri
nand nandan bilmaai
badraa ne gheri maai
maai ri
nand nandan bilmaai ee
eit ghan garje ut ghan larje ae
it ghan garje ut ghan larje
chamkat biju sawaai
chamkat biju sawaai
umad ghumad chahun dis se aaye
umad ghumad chahun dis se aaye
pawan chalai purvaai ee
badraa ne gheri maai
maai ri
nand nandan bilmaai ee
daadur mor papeehaa boley
daadur mor papeehaa boley
koyal sabad sunaai ee ee
koyal sabad sunaai ee
Meera ke prabhu girdhar naagar
Meera ke prabhu girdhar naagar
charan kanwal chit laaye
badraa ne gheri maai
maai ri
nand nandan bilmaai ee
badraa ne gheri maai
maai ri
nand nandan bilmaai ee ee
2 Responses to "Nand nandan bilmaai"
January 29, 2013 at 7:40 am
Simply beautiful, thanks a lot. There is another Sant Mira bai bhajan: “Ari mai to prem divani re”, which kindly upload. I think it is based on raag Bhimpalas Thanks
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
January 29, 2013 at 5:46 am
Sadanandji,
Aapne Radio Vividh Bharti se judi huyi bachpan ki aur ek yaad taaja kardi. So many of her private songs and bhajan abhi bhi kaanon mein goonjate hai.
He nandlala tera man hai kaala main to bholi re Biraj ki naar…….
Seeta ke Shri Ram Radha ke Shyaam……..(my fav one)
Chhod Mat Jaiyo Ji Maharaj….
List goes on…..
Such a melodious voice! Thanks for the post and song.
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