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.
If one browses through the Hindi films made in the 1940s, it will be observed that there were many lesser known music directors who had tried their luck in Hindi films. My guess is that the number of such lesser known music directors in the 1940s may be a close to 50. Sadly, most of these talented music directors could not sustain their careers for long in the Hindi film industry. This blog has covered songs of many of lesser known music directors of the 40s such as Neenu Majumdar, Shanti Kumar Desai, Shyambabu Pathak, Madhulal Damodar Master, Ramchandra Pal etc. V Balsara was one among such music directors who started his career in Hindi films but could not sustain it for long as a music director. But he changed the track of his career and became a famous instrumentalist, orchestra conductor, a music teacher and the music director of non-filmy songs and a few Bengali films during rest of his life. I became aware of his name in the 1970s mainly for his beautiful compositions of some non-filmy Hindi songs.
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Mere geeton ka singaar ho tum
Posted on: February 24, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Khayyam is one of the music directors of Hindi film industry who made a significant contribution in propagating the NFSs. By his own admission, he had started declining most of the offers for Hindi films’ music direction during late 50s and early 60s as he did not feel comfortable in working in such films in which interference of producers and distributors in music direction had become the order of the day. It was during this period that he devoted his time and energy in composing some of the finest NFSs especially with Talat Mehmood and Mohammed Rafi.
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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.
My browsing through non-filmy songs on the internet for the last few months have been like a nostalgic journey in the down memory lane. Some of the NFSs I have listened to in the recent period took me back to 60s and 70s when I had heard those on the radio. I had completely forgotten some of them until I rediscovered them on the internet. My latest rediscovery of a non-fllmy ghazal is less than 24 hours old but I have already listened to it umpteen times and still listening. This Shakeel Badayuni’s ghazal is ‘nazar nawaz nazaaron mein jee nahin lagtaa’ sung by Shanti Hiranand, a well known classical vocalist and a disciple of Mallika-e-Ghazal Begum Akhtar. I has heard this ghazal many times in the 60s on the radio but had completely forgotten it until I came across the audio clip of this ghazal again.
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Ek do teen ho to karoon aitbaar
Posted on: February 22, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
I have so far seen three films produced and directed by Roop Kishore Shorey – ‘Ek Thhi Ladki’ (1949), ‘ Dholak’ (1951) and ‘Ek Do Teen’ (1953) and I relished them wholeheartedly. He was known in his hay days as ‘King of Comedy’ as most of his films were based on light situational comedies. There was no gaudiness in his comedy films as the comedy emanated from a ‘self goal’ that is, the characters in his films laughed on themselves rather than taking pleasure in laughing on others.
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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.
I was aware of four popular folklores of Punjab-Sind provinces which are now in Pakistan – Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban, Sohni Mahiwal and Sassi Punnu. These are the tragic love stories in which the lovers die at the end. The common features of all these four folklores are (i) the female character is extremely beautiful, (ii) families of both the lovers resent their unions, (iii) female lovers are forced by their families to marry other man and (iv) at the end, female lovers die first followed by the male lovers except in case of Mirza Sahiban where the two lovers die in the reverse order.
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This article is writtten by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
The ghazal ‘ae mohabbat tere anjaam pe ronaa aayaa’ and Begum Akhtar are inseparable. If ‘deewaana banaana hai to deewaana banaa de’ (1925) heralded the arrival of Begum Akhtar as a ghazal singer, ‘ae mohabbat tere anjaam pe ronaa aayaa’ (early 1950s) consolidated her position in ghazal singing paving the way for her to be bestowed upon the title of ‘mallika-e-ghazal’ later. I came to know about Begum Akhtar in my younger days only because of this ghazal which was regularly played on the radio. The simple words in this ghazal with the captivating style of Begum Akhtar’s rendition attracted not only the connoisseurs of ghazals but also the commoners. No wonder, the sales of gramophone records of this ghazal attained the stature of a platinum disc.
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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.
When the techniques of song recording were first introduced in India by a few music record companies, there was some initial myths and superstitions associated with it. A few of the professional singers believed that song recordings reduced the life span of singers as the electric gadgets suck away the lung power. A few even went to the extent in saying that the microphone takes away all the good qualities of a singer’s voice. It is said that Kesarbai Kerkar, the classical singer did not record a single song for music companies during her life time. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, the doyen of Patiala Gharana initially evaded recordings on some pretext or other but the underlying factor seemed to be the fear of losing the quality of his voice.
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Bhar de jholi Allah naam
Posted on: February 14, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
LAILA MAJNU(1953) was produced by P N Arora under the banner of All India Pictures and directed by K Amarnath. The star cast included Shammi Kapoor, Nutan, Ulhas, Begum Para, Wasti, Kammo, Ratan Kumar etc. All the songs of this film were penned by Shakeel Badayuni. However, the film had two music directors – Ghulam Mohammed (11 songs) and Sardar Malik (3 songs).
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Kehke bhi na aaye tum
Posted on: February 2, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
I was a bit surprised to note that Mohammed Rafi had to struggle for nearly 5 years to establish him as one of the leading male playback singers in Hindi film industry. It is said that he recorded his first song for a Punjabi film as early as 1942. It took him another 2 years to get his first song in a Hindi film ‘Pahele Aap’ (1944), a duet with Shyam thus beginning his long lasting collaboration with Naushad. It took another year for him to get an opportunity to sing his first solo song ‘ae dil-e-nakaam tamanna’ in ‘Hamara Sansaar’ (1945) followed by ‘teraa khilonaa toota baalak’ in ‘Anmol Ghadi’ (1946), the latter one under the baton of Naushad.
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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