Shyaam kahaan soya tu Raam kahaan soya tu
Posted on: January 6, 2015
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.
VINTAGE NAUSHAD…..Song No. 2
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NAUSHAD started composing independently in 1940. That makes the year 2015, an year of Diamond Jubilee of his Debut. It is therefore appropriate that we take a re-look at his earliest compositions.
The second song in this series is from the film Darshan-1941. It was a social film made by the famous Prakash pictures ( Ramrajya-43 fame ). The film was directed by C.M.Luhar,B.Sc., a very experienced, learned and well known person in film world at that time. The cast was Prem Adeeb, Jyoti, Meera, Bhudo Advani, Nazeer, Madhusudan, Amirbai Karnataki etc.
Naushad was still a newcomer as an independent composer and so far he had done just one film, Premnagar-40. He had not yet tasted success. In those days, there were not many specialist playback singers( few like Zohrabai etc). Almost all the actors used to sing their own songs as well as act in the film. All of them were singers by necessity and practice. Naushad had once remarked in an interview later in his career, ” it was a very painful task to make a non-singer sing. They avoided rehearsals and thought that they knew singing “. For a methodical person like Naushad, it was a difficult task. What Naushad did initially was that he used atleast 5-6 singers in every film, so that at least there was variety was. And anyway, he believed in selecting a singer based on his suitability to the song.
Thus for the film Darshan, he used 8 singers for the 13 songs of the film. Singers were Prem Adeeb, Meera, Jyoti, Durrani, Madhusudan, Bhudo, Kaushalya and Sheetal Ghosh ( this name indicates a female, but HE was a male singer, used mainly by Naushad. He also sang in Mala-41 and Sasural-41 ).
The Director CHIMANLAL MULJIBHOY LUHAR ( 1901-1948) was a Chemistry graduate from Bombay University. He started writing as a critic and author in journals like Beesvin sadee, Navchetan and Bombay Chronicle. he joined film line as a lab Assistant in Kohinoor studios in early 20s. Soon he became a noted cameraman for several documentaries, with K.D.Brothers, Bombay,under a British cameraman of Prince of Wales’ official entourage. After a brief stint at Rajkot with Saurashtra Films and a longer one at Krishna Films-where he shot 20 films, he joined Sharada Studios with ‘Dagabaz Duniya-1926 and several stunt films by Master Vithal. He turned a producer for a few stunt films. Later he was a partner in Sharda films and a Director with Sagar Movietone(1934-1940). From 1941 to 46 he worked for Prakash Pictures. He directed Sassi Punnu-32,Silver King-35 Talash-E-haq (first film of Nargis, made by Jaddanbai)-35, Do deewane, Kharab Jaan, Capt. Kirtikumar, Dynamite, Kaun kisika, Sewa Samaj, Saubhagya, Darshan, Station master, School Master, Uss paar and Bindiya. He died at the young age of 47 years,in 1948.
Today’s song is sung by Meera and Amirbai Karnataki. In the silent era there were scores of Anglo Indian, Parsee and European girls working in films. Since there was no sound, these girls could manage with their good looks and readiness to do romantic scenes. When Talkie era came most of these white skin girls disappeared because they could not talk in Hindi/Urdu or sing. Few survived,like Sabita Devi, Madhuri etc. We all know about Amirbai, but who was Meera ? She was one of those Christian girls who survived due to their knowledge of Hindi/urdu and could sing too. I tried very hard to find out information about her from my resources, but to no avail. Finally I requested shri Harish Raghuvanshi ji-the famous compiler, writer and Film historian about Meera. He very kindly gave me some information about her. Thank you,Sir !
Meera’s real name was Muriel Alexander. She was born on 10-11-1919. She was from a respectable family. Her father was Superintendent-local Audit in AG’s office. Brother E. Alexander was an All India level cricketer. She passed her Inter science exam from Benaras Hindu University. it was through one Mr. Seal, who was a manager in Adarsh Chitra that she got her first break in the film Dhuwandhar-1935. This was the Debut film of Leela Chitnis also. It is not known if she sang any songs in that film, as no records are available. My guess is that,besides acting, she must have sung a few songs in that film.
Her name first appears as an actress and singer in the film Bhabhi-38, in which she sang 3 solo songs. She must have sung many songs from 1935 to 1938,,but singers names were not mentioned on records those days. Thus many singers must have gone uncredited in those years. Samewas the case with Amirbai Karnataki too. After Bhabhi, her name appears in Nirmala-38 and Vachan-38 in which she sang 1 solo and 3 duets. She acted and sang songs in films of Ranjit, Prakash and Minerva Movietone films.
You will find that in today’s song there is hardly any melody. Initially Naushad had many problems. Being a new composer,he was not yet ready to do any experimentation, so he preferred to toe the line of existing methods of using instruments. Though he was a classical music lover, it was not possible to make tunes base on Ragaas, as the singers were not trained enough to do justice to such songs. Since most actors sang their own songs, he also did not have much choice.
This was the problem with many other composers too. Some composers like Anil Biswas, C.Ramchandra etc. solved this problem to some extent by singing some songs themselves in the films. However, Naushad was never a singer, nor did he ever try singing, but he tried to solve this problem by using different singers in one film.
During his initial period of 1940 to 1950,for his 28 films ( excluding Kanchan 41, ofcourse), Naushad used 21 Female singers and 17 male singers-a total of 38 singers. By 1951, he had tested his future lead singers. Even otherwise, most of the old time singers like Meera, Jyoti, Karan Dewan, Nirmala, Parul Ghosh etc had disappeared. Rakjumari,Zohrabai, Amirbai,Durrani, Uma Devi etc were in the process of disappearing from the scene by the early 50s.
Rafi sang for Naushad first time in 1944, Shamshad Begum in 1946, Mukesh in 1948, Lata in 1949 and Talat in 1950. Naushad hardly used Asha or Geeta. In his peak period, he depended heavily on Lata and Rafi occasionally using Mukesh, Shamshad and Talat. Kishore Kumar had sung only one song for Naushad and that song also was dropped from the film.
More about Naushad and his early music in next episode. For now let us listen to a song sung by Amirbai and Meera,for film Darshan-1941…….
Song-Shyaam kahaan soya tu raam kahaan soya tu (Darshan)(1941) Singer-Meera, Amirbai Karnataki, Lyrics-Pt Balam, MD-Naushad
Both
Lyrics
shyaam kahaan soya tu
raam kahaan soya tu
shyaam kahaan soya tu
prabhu main rahi pukaar
meri oar bhi nihaar
prabhu main rahi pukaar
meri oar bhi nihaar
bikhre hain nainan ke taar moti
aaj main hoon bin neer ke roti
tumraghuraai ho
mere tum sahaai ho
tum raghurai ho
mere tum sahaai ho
shyam kahaan soya tu
raam kahaan soya tu
kaahe tu roye sakhi ri ee ee
dheer kyun khoye sakhi re
kaahe tu roye sakhi ri ee ee
dheer kyun khoye sakhi re
swapn ka jeevan hai sakhi
sudh na ganwaao o
swapn sa jeevan hai sakhi
sudh na ganwaao
sukh dukh ki ek ye kahaani
aao ke ab mol chukaao o
tum raghuraai ho
mere to sahaai ho
tum raghuraai ho
mere to sahaai ho
shyaam kahaan soya tu
raam kahaan soya tu
shyam kahaan soya tu
raam kahaan soya tu
3 Responses to "Shyaam kahaan soya tu Raam kahaan soya tu"
January 6, 2015 at 11:40 am
Balam Pardesi>>Mala-41, Geet Govind-47, Pehla Pyar-47, Ramayan-54, Bhedi Lutera-55
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
January 6, 2015 at 11:00 am
It is after a loooong time that I am reading a post by Arunji. Welcome back. I learnt of the sad news very much later as I was not following the posts. My heartfelt condolences.
It is very nice that you have picked up Naushad, a very talented Music Director and a very nice person. I think he used Mukesh also very very little. MELA and ANDAAZ were among Mukesh’s best musical showcases. Then Mukesh went into RK fold and lost Naushad.
Much later Naushad called him for SAATHI where again he left his mark on two beautiful songs.
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January 6, 2015 at 11:12 am
Shri Gupta ji,
Thank you very much for your soothing message.
Life must go on. Time is a great healer.
-AD
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