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.
A few days back, I came across a song ‘taqdeer ne hansa ke hamen phir rulaa diyaa’ from the film ‘SHAHNAAZ (1948). The song was composed and sung by Ameerbai Karnataki. Until now, I had not heard the name of the film. In fact, except for Ameerbai Karnataki and Mohammed Rafi, most of other names associated with this film are new to me.
Read more on this topic…
Hamen maar gayee re
Posted on: March 9, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regulkar contributor to this blog.
Folk music has played an important role in popularising Hindi film songs. The films’ producers and more so the music directors knew that folk music based film songs bring instant connectivity with the cine goers especially in the semi-urban and rural areas. The beats and rhythms of most of the folk music are good inspirations for music directors to customise the Hindi film songs accordingly. In the early years of Hindi film music following the advent of talkies, songs were mostly based on classical and semi-classical tunes which included the traditional devotional music. The earliest Hindi film songs recorded on a folk based tune as per my search of the Hindi film songs on the internet was a song bande naav ka langar chhod from ‘Kangan’ (1939) which appears to be based on a bhatiali ( boat man’s) folk song of Bengal. There may be a few more Hindi film songs in the 30s based on folk music.
Read more on this topic…
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog. This article is the 1000th guest post in this blog.
Joy Mukherjee and Saira Banu were one of the popular lead pairs of Hindi movies in 1960s. They acted together in ‘Door Ki Aawaz’ (1964), ‘Aao Pyaar Karen’ (1964), ‘Saaz Aur Aawaz’ (1966), ‘Ye Zindagi Kitni Haseen Hai’ (1966) and ‘Shagird’ (1967). However, except for ‘Shagird’ (1967), none of their other 4 films could succeed at the box office. On the other hand, during the same period, Joy Mukherjee also paired with Asha Parekh in ‘Phir Wohi Dil Laaya Hoon’ (1963), ‘Ziddi’ (1964) and ‘Love in Tokyo’ (1966) all of which became box office hits. Most of these films were directly or indirectly associated with Mukherjee family and their production company Filmistan and later Filmalaya.
Read more on this topic…
Dahar mein naqsh e wafaa
Posted on: March 7, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath,a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
The year was 1947. Dilip Kumar, Anil Biswas and Lata Mangeshkar were travelling in a suburban local train to Malad where Filmistan Studio was located. During the journey, Anil Biswas introduced Lata Mangeshkar as a Maharashtrian girl who would be the singing star of tomorrow. Those days most of the Hindi film songs used to have more Urdu words than Hindi. Dilip Kumar retorted sarcastically. ‘A Maharashtrian? Her Urdu would not do justice to the song. My ears would tingle in shame’. These words stung Lata Mangeshkar so much that in the following morning, she started learning Urdu from an Urdu tutor just to prove Dilip Kumar wrong. This incident was revealed by Lata Mangeshkar in a private function at Dilip Kumar’s residence some time in 1970. Dilip Kumar in his characteristic style, replied that Lata Mangeshkar’s pronunciations and diction both in Hindi and Urdu are so clear and correct that now his ears tingle in shame for those remarks he made in 1947.
Read more on this topic…
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Recently, I listened to a song ‘is dil se teri yaad bhulaayi nahi jaati’ on YT sung by Mohammed Rafi. The song sounded familiar to me. My first impression was that this song was from an old film. But the uploader of the audio clip mentioned that it was a NFS composed by Hansraj Bahl. I never knew that Mohammed Rafi had sung any NFS under the baton of Hansraj Bahl. One of the regulars on YT whom I consider to be fairly reliable has mentioned that this song was written by Rajinder Krishan as he had heard his name being mentioned by the announcer on Radio Ceylon while playing this song. Since the composition as well as rendition of this song gave me an impression of a filmy song, I searched for other audio clips of the same song and got my hand on an audio clip where the uploader had claimed that the song was from the film ‘Kaneez’ (1949). The film had two music director – Ghulam Haider and Hansraj Bahl and the song was accredited by the uploader to Ghulam Haider-Hansraj Bahl.
Read more on this topic…
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
A few months back, I came across a non-filmy ghazal ‘asser-e-gham ka bhalaa phir kahaan thikaanaa thhaa’ sung by Kamla Jharia, a classical singer of dadra, thumri, ghazals and devotional songs. She was also an actor-singer and a playback singer mainly in 30s and 40s. I loved this ghazal so much that in token of my appreciation, I decided to write an article on this ghazal for which I was collecting background information on it. During this period, I came across another audio clip of the same ghazal on YT, sung by her. But this time, it was accredited to a Hindi film ‘Struggle’ (1936). So I put my plan to write an article on hold until I solved the puzzle of this ghazal being labelled both as non-filmy as well as a filmy ghazal.
Read more on this topic…
Pitu maatu sahaayak swaami sakha
Posted on: March 1, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
It is a tradition or convention in most of the schools that just before the start of the classes in the morning, students collectively sing a prayer. During my early school days – probably in 1952 or 1953, I remember, we used to sing a prayer ‘pitu maatu sahaayak swami sakhaa tum hi ek naath hamaare ho’. In the absence of public address system, the prayer used to be sung by 4-5 students from our class who had aptitude in singing and others in the class would sing with them in tandem.
Read more on this topic…
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
During my ‘crazy’ days of collecting 78 RPM gramophone records of rare gems of old Hindi films songs, I realised that there were many old Hindi films of early 50s whose gramophone records in 78 RPM format were not available at all. Some of the songs of such films were “sajaan ki ot leke” (Zevaraat, 1949), “yaad aane waale kyon yaad aa rahe hain” (Anmol Ratan, 1950), “preetam meri duniyaa mein do din to rahe hote” (Adaa, 1951), “baandh preeti phool dor” (Malti Madhav, 1951), “main saagar ki mast lahar” (Dhuaan, 1953), “bhool jaa sapne suhaane bhool jaa” (Rajdhani, 1956) etc. I had spent long hours in some of the prominent record shops in Mumbai for buying gramophone records of these and other rare songs but did not succeed at all. Those days, EPs/LPs records had made their presence in the records shops and these were displayed on the front side of the shops while 78 RPM records were relegated to the far end of the shops. In some shops, 78 RPM records were stored in ante-rooms full of dust.
Read more on this topic…
More naina saawan bhaadon
Posted on: February 27, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Many poet-saints were born across India between the 14th to 16th centuries. I recallthe names of a few of them mainly because films were made on their lives. They were Guru Nanak, Sant Kabeer, Sant Gyaneshwar, Sant Tukaram, Narsinh Mehta, Chandidas, Purandara Dasa, Kanaka Dasa, Arunagirinathar, Appiah Dikshitar etc. These saints wrote poems in praise of Gods. Some of them even composed music for their poems. In eastern India, there was a poet-saint Vidyapati Thakur (also known as Maithili Kavi Kokil or simply Vidyapati) who was born in the 15th century in Madhubani, Bihar. He wrote poems in Maithili dialect in praise of Lord Shiva but also wrote love lore on Radha-Krishna in keeping with the popularity of Lord Krishna in this region. Over a period of time, his poems and love lore spread across whole of eastern India. His influence over Bengal was so much that at one point of time, many including me thought that he was a poet-saint belonging to Bengal.
Read more on this topic…
Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
Recent comments