Sundari ho sundari
Posted on: September 10, 2015
This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a 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.
Today’s song is from the film Lajawab-50. It is sung by Anil Biswas, Lata and Binapani Mukherjee, with chorus. It is a lovely,rhythmatic,foot-tapping song and clearly shows the unmistakable stamp of the composer Anil Biswas. He was hailed as one of the most original, revolutionary and experimental composer, even dubbed as “The Bhishma Pitamaha” of HFM.
He was an original. When Anil Biswas came on the scene in the mid 30s, the Parsee Theatre music, Marathi Natya Sangeet and Gujarati drama and Lok kala Sangeet was being followed in film music. He decided to change this pattern and he used Robindra Sangeet and Folk tunes for his songs. He was Revolutionary because he introduced western instruments in his music as a routine, which no one had thought of till thenr. He was experimental, because he tried a variety of singers.
Those days, when playback was not yet common, non singers sang songs and it was a terrible task to make them sing properly. Anil Biswas tried the First ever playback, in Bombay, in his film “Mahageet”-37, singing the playback song himself to be shot on Hiren Bose in the film.
In a span of 30 years and in his 86 films having 777 songs, he used 76 singers. Among his singers Lata stands at First rank with 120 songs. The second place is shared by Surendra and Meena Kapoor( naturally), with 44 songs. Next name is that of Anil Biswas himself, with 43 songs.
Going through the list of singers used by Anil Biswas, one finds very unknown names like Omkar, Kamlakar, Kokila, Gajadhar, D.Manek, Tarachand, Devaskar, MadhavKkale, Yusuf Effendi, Solanki and Swapna Sen. Except Madhav kale and Yusuf Effendi, I have never heard the other names myself, nor have I read about them anywhere. It is likely that these singers were from the early era and in his earliest films. He first sang in ‘Dharam ki Devi’-35 and his last song was in ‘Sautela Bhai’-62
In Hindi film industry, right from 1931 onwards, many composers from Bengal came to Bombay to try their luck,but only a few could make their name here. Their major problem was Language and cultural difference. There were four major composers from Bengal, who succeeded here and etched their names in the HFM history. I call them A grade. They all operated at the same time during the Golden Age period. The following table will give a clearer picture-
| S N | Name | Year Of birth | Place | Period of active operation | years | Total Films | Total songs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Anil Biswas | 1914 | East Bengal | 1935-1965 | 30 | 86 | 777 |
| 2. | S D Burman | 1906 | East Bengal | 1946-1976 | 30 | 90 | 717 |
| 3. | Hemant Kumar | 1920 | West Bengal | 1952-1979 | 24 | 54 | 429 |
| 4. | Salil Chaudhari | 1923 | West Bengal | 1953-1995 | 40 | 70 | 325 |
Anil Biswas was the first major composer from Bengal to start his career in Bombay in 1935, at the age of just 21 years, whereas S D Burman was the oldest having started his career in Bombay in 1946, at the age of 40 years ! The longest tenure was that of Salil Chaudhari,but his song total is the lowest, with an average of about 5 songs per film. This is much lower than the average of 8+ and 9 of the others. This may be because in later part of his career, Salil da gave music to many parallel films which had very few songs in them.
As can be seen from the table, the two senior composers were from East Bengal and the two junior composers were from West Bengal. The styles of these two groups were different because of the different pattern of Eastern and Western Bangal music. All four depended and used heavily from the folk tunes and Bangla songs, from their respective regions. Anil Biswas and Burman da drew heavily from the Eastern Bangla folk tunes and that is why sometimes their music had similarities.
A case in point is today’s song. “Sundari O sundari” from Lajawab-50 was based on a folk tune of East Bengal. By coincidence S D Burman too used the same tune and same Mukhda for his Bangla film, “Samar’-50. The link for this Bangla song is here. This Bangla song is sung by Kishore kumar, Geeta Dutt and Arun kumar. Not only this, S D Burman again used the same tune for a song in the film ‘Munimji”-55 ( Anadi re Anadi).
Besides these stalwart A grade composers, there were some less successful composers from Bengal, in Bombay, like Ashok Ghosh, Pannalal Ghosh, Robin Banerjee, Hiren Bose, Shyamal Mitra, Arunkumar Mukherjee and Manas Mukherjee.
There were a host of small time Bangla composers (some of them were Big names in Bengal) who came to Bombay for a while, did 2-3 films and then went back. Few of them were Shoolpani Mukherjee, S P Mukherjee, V V Ganguly, Niren Lahiri, Shivram Ghosh, A C Biswas, Bhismadev Chatterjee, Sushant Banerjee, Robin Chatterjee, Naresh Bhattacharya etc.
Today’s song is from the film ‘Lajawab’-50. There were 11 songs in the film. So far, 3 songs from this movie are posted in the blog. This includes a song “zamaane ka dastoor” by Lata and Mukesh. This was a song which was composed by Anil Biswas specially for Noorjehan and Saigal, but unfortunately he never got a chance to do a film for them, so he used this song in this film.
One of the singers in today’s song, Binapani Mukherjee, sang 5 songs for Anil Biswas,the first being in film “Durbaan”-46. She got fame in C Ramchandra’s songs from Muskurahat-43, Safar-46 ( Kabhi yaad karke ), Shehnai -47 and Leela-50. She also sang for many others. In film “Raaz”-49, she sang 4 songs.
The cast of the film was Rehana, Sohan, David, Kuldeep etc. The story of the film was already given in one of the songs earlier, so I am not repeating it here. Enjoy the lilting song….
Audio
Song-Sundari ho sundari (Laajawaab)(1950) Singers-Anil Biswas, Lata, Binapani Mukherjee, Lyrics-Prem Dhawan, MD-Anil Biswas
Male Chorus
Female chorus
Lyrics
sundari ho sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
o o o
o o o
o o o
sundari o sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
sundari
do dinon ki zindagi mein kyun bahaaye neer
do dinon ki zindagi mein kyun bahaaye neer
maare jaa maare ja chhori
o chhori
o chhori
maare jaa maare ja chhori
nainanwa ke teer
jiya laage na ree
jiya laage na ree
sundari ho sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
sundari ho sundari
o o o o
o o o o
hai do dinon ki zindagi
sundari
o o o o
kaali kaali zulfen teri
gore gore gaal
ho gori
gore gore gaal
ho chhori
gore gore gaal
thhummak thhummak chale chhori
mohini ki chaal
chhori mohini ki chaal
hoy
thhummak thummaak chale chhori
mohini ki chaal
chhori mohini ki chaal
hoy hoy
hoy hoy
hoy hoy
hoy hoy
jhoothhe tere waade
jaa re jhoothhe tere geet
jaa re jhoothhe tere geet
hamko nahin bhaaye
teri preet ki ye reet
teri preet ki ye reet
jab tu hi munh pher le to
ho gori
ho chhori
jab tu hi munh pher le to
kaise dharoon dheer
jiya laage na ree
jiya laage na ree
sundari ho sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
o o o o
o o o o
sundari o sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
sundari
o o o o
o o o o
tan tana tan maandar baaje
dhol baje
chham chham dhol baje
jiya bole
dhhak dhhak jiya bole
dhhak dhhak
o o o
do dinon ki zindagi mein dil lagaaye kaun
haan dil lagaaye kaun
prem ki agni mein
bhala ji jalaaye kaun
bhala ji jalaaye kaun
phir nain mila ke kaahe daari
o gori
o chhori
nain mila ke kaahe daari
pyaar ki zanjeer
jiya laage na ree
jiya laage na ree
sundari ho sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
o o o o
o o o o o
sundari o sundari
hai do dinon ki zindagi
sundari
2 Responses to "Sundari ho sundari"
September 11, 2015 at 3:52 pm
Thank you very much, Deshmukh sir.
I had never realised that Anil da had sung those many songs.
indeed a foot-tapping number sung beautifully.
regards,
Avadh Lal
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
September 10, 2015 at 7:05 pm
There was another song Hai Do Din Bahar Hai by Anilda and Lata in the movie
Robin Chatterjee
Raj Laxmi (1945)
Tum Aur Main (1947)
Sabyasachi (1948)
Majboori (1954)
Ratan Deep (1952)
Pehli Shadi (1953)
Dhaake Ki Malmal (1956)
Firdaus (1953)
Chimni Ka Dhuaan (1973)
Music Director: Neeren Lahidi
Movie: Aashiana 1936
Lyricist: Qamar Jalalabadi
Jeevan, Devbala, Manilal, Satyanath, Rajkumari
Music Director: Nareshwar Bhattacharyya
Movie: Shole-1953
Lyricist: Kamil Rashid
Ashok Kumar, Poornima, Beena Roy
I could not find any info on other MDs
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