Archive for the ‘Post by Sadanand Kamath’ Category
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Shammi Kapoor had acted in over a dozen films as a lead actor in early 50s, most of which flopped at the box office. Chor Bazaar (1954) was one film. It was produced under the banner of All India Pictures and it was directed by P N Arora. The star cast included Shammi Kapoor, Sumitra Devi, Chitra, Om Prakash, Kammo, Amir, Cuckoo. Parshuram etc with a guest appearance by Wasti. This film had six songs all written by Shakeel Badayuni and set to music by Sardar Malik. I remembered the name of this film only because of an immortal song “huyi ye hamse naadaani teri mehefil mein aa baithhe” from this film which I had heard on my younger days on radio. Recently, I had seen this film on the VCD that I have with me. As usual with almost all VCDs of old films, the film lacks continuity in some places because of lots of cuts. I did not find one song ” Har dar ki thokerein hain” sung by Lata Mangeshkar in the VCD.
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Morey dwaar khule hain
Posted on: March 25, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
I had mentioned in one of my earlier write-ups that all the songs from the film ANMOL RATAN (1950) were very rare to get in the 70s even with the individual collectors. Though the film failed miserably at the box office, all the songs from this film were the forgotten ‘ratans’ (gems). We are fortunate that majority of the songs from this film are now available on the internet as audio clips. There are 11 songs in the film of which 5 songs have been discussed in this blog.
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This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
If I were to ask the question ‘what was the common between Shailendra, Jaan Nisar Akhtar and Nyay Sharma’, the obvious answer is that they were lyricists for Hindi film songs during the golden era of Hindi film music. There is one more commonality between them. All of them tried their hands in producing a Hindi film in the 1960s which resulted in great financial strains on them from which they did not fully recover. In fact, after the release of their films, their careers as lyricist was on the downhill and in case of Shailendra, it ended with his untimely death.
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Ae dard zara dam le
Posted on: March 24, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Rajkumari and Amirbai Karnataki were among the leading female playback singers of 1930s and 40s. Both of them started their filmy careers around 1934-35 and also acted and sang songs in the films on themselves. Curiosity led me to check as to who had sung more Hindi film songs among them. So I checked the number of Hindi film songs sung by Amirbai Karnataki and Rajkumari during their careers from http://www.myswar.com. Since this website gives the details of songs only from the year 1941 onward, it was not possible to get the total number of songs sung by them in their entire filmy careers. Nonetheless, I felt that within this limitation, one should get a fair assessment of their contributions to Hindi film songs. As per these data, Amirbai Karnataki sang a total (solo, duets etc) number of 302 songs while Rajkumari sang a total of 387 songs during 1941 and onward. On this basis, I would guess that Rajkumari may have sung more Hindi film songs then Amirbai Karnataki.
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Mat kar saaj singaar sundari
Posted on: March 22, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Jagmohan Sursagar was known mostly for his non-filmy songs whether in Bengali or Hindi. After the success of his songs in ‘Meghdoot’ (1945), he collaborated with Faiyyaz Hashmi and Kamal Das Gupta for recording many non-filmy Hindi songs which became very popular. Faiyyaz Hashmi was a full time employee of EMI (HMV) at Calcutta. After bifurcation of British India, Faiyyaz Hashmi was transferred to Dhaka in 1947 and to Lahore a year thereafter to strengthen the office which was affected by the migration of many of its artists to India. With this, the collaboration of these trios virtually came to an end. Thereafter, Jagmohan Sursagar recorded some more Hindi non-film songs with different lyricists such as B C Madhur, Madhuraj, Rajinder Krishan etc. But most of these songs are silent on the name of the composer. It is believed that during this period, Jagmohan himself may have composed the music for most of his non-filmy songs.
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O varsha ke pehle baadal
Posted on: March 21, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
In the 30s and 40s, legendary singers like K C Dey, K L Saigal and Pankaj Mullick with their Hindi film and non-film songs mesmerized not only the people of Bengal but the whole of India. In fact,it was the K L Saigal-Pankaj Mullick duo who ruled the music scene in Calcutta (Kolkatta) in the 1940s. It was during this time that a new singer emerged in Calcutta who, with his solo song ‘o varsha ke pehle baadal meraa sandesaa le jaana’ in the film MEGHDOOT (1945) impressed the listeners very much. This song became the most popular song of the film. The singer was none other than Jagmohan Sursagar, born as Jaganmoy Mitra. The popularity of this song resulted in a collaboration of Jagmohan-Faiyyaz Hashmi-Kamal Das Gupta trio in bringing out some of the finest non-film Hindi songs which became even more popular than their filmy songs.
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Jis raat ke khwaab aaye
Posted on: March 19, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular cotributor to this blog.
The name of Habba Khatoon, the Kashmiri poetess may not be familiar to many people. This name became familiar to me only sometime in 1987 when Muzzafar Ali ( of Umrao Jaan fame) announced his plan to make a film on the life of Habba Khatoon. Dimple Kapadia was taken for the title role with Vinod Khanna in the role of the first husband of Habba Khatoon. The title of the film was changed to ‘Zooni’, Habba Khatoon’s maiden name. The lyrics were to be written by Shahryar and Khayyam was to give the music direction. Muzzafar Ali believed that Zooni’s life was the powerful vehicle to project the real Kashmir. After nearly 20 months of shooting in Kashmir, the film was shelved in 1989 probably due to the rise of militancy in the Kashmir valley. I got my hand on a small video clip of the film on YT uploaded by Basheer Ali who was the Director of Photography for the film. From the content of the clip which also has a part of the song ‘rukh-e-dildaar deedam daras ko aaye preetam’ picturised on Dimple Kapadia, it appears that it was made as a part of marketing the film for international audience. The video clip is here.
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Dil e naadaan tujhe huaa kyaa hai
Posted on: March 18, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
In recent years, there has been a trend in Hindi film industry to make sequels of the box office hit films. Sequel films are said to be comparatively risk free as the success formula has already been tested. The earliest sequel film that I spotted on the internet was ‘Hunterwali Ki Beti’ (1943) which was supposed to be a follow-up of ‘Hunterwali’ (1935). I doubt whether the maker (Wadia brothers) of these two films ever thought in terms of a sequel but the story of the later film seems to be a follow up of the first film. Fearless Nadia (real name Marry Ann Evans) the first stunt heroine in the Indian film industry, John Cawas and Bhoman Shroff were part of the cast in both these films which were box office hits.
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Zihaal e miskin makun tagaaful
Posted on: March 16, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
For the past few days, I have been going through the poems of Amir Khusrau. Fortunately, most of his poems are available on the internet with English translation. His love poems, riddles, dohas (couplets in Hindwi), qawwalis etc are very absorbing. I feel, it will not be an exaggeration to say that the trigger for the first literary renaissance especially in northern India was witnessed during the time of Amir Khusrau. He was one among the first in elite class to propagate the use of an Indian vernacular language in his poems which he called Hindawi ( mix of Hindi and its subsidiary dialects). I am not sure but the development of Urdu language in later years may have come as a continuum from Hindwi language.
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Sur ki gati main kyaa jaanoon
Posted on: March 14, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
In a book ‘Vedanta Treatise’ I have with me, four types of yogas have been prescribed for attainment of salvation. They are Bhakti (devotion), Gyaana (knowledge), Karma (activity) and Hata (compulsion). It is generally believed that devotion is the mother of all other yogas. Without devotion, all other yogas would be incomplete for attaining the objective. In this context, I recall an introduction by late C Rajagopalichari on a LP of M S Subbulaxmi’s immortal ‘Bhaj Govindam-Vishnu Shashtranamavali and I quote a part of it from the CD I have with me:
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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