Archive for the ‘Post by Sadanand Kamath’ Category
Mere dil ko sajan samjha do
Posted on: January 31, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
During my childhood days, I had heard more about Suraiya than any other contemporary female actors like Mudhubala, Nargis etc. As I know now, both Madhubala and Nargis were more successful in terms of their box office hit films than that of Suraiya in the 50s. But it was Suraiya who was the most discussed star at that time. I guess that her charismatic personality invited keen interest from cinegoers and her fans in the same way as was the case with Rajesh Khanna in the 70s. The building in which she used to stay at Marine Drive was an important ‘tourist spot’ in those days for the visitors in the city. People would to wait for her ‘darshan’ which eluded most of them . After many years, this type of adulation was witnessed outside Rajesh Khanna’s bungalow in the 70s and Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalow even now.
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Nand nandan bilmaai
Posted on: January 28, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
January 28th is the birth day of playback singer Suman Kalyanpur. She is a living example of how the career of a talented singer can be marred by a close resemblance of the voice of the numero uno singer in the field, in her case Lata Mangeshkar. Naturally, film industry preferred the reigning queen rather than giving enough opportunity to Suman Kalyanpur to prove her worth. She was mostly used as a substitute for Lata Mangeshkar when the latter was not available for recording the songs. Alternatively, she would get the singing assignments in low budget films. In the circumstances, I thought that she would have utilised her spare time in recording many NFSs. I find that even in respect of NFSs, Suman Kalyanpur is lagging in numbers in comparison to other top playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh etc. Was she really interested in pursuing playback singing career ? She is known to be a very private and low profile person. Only those who were close to her could get to know her mind. It took Ameen Sayani more than 40 years to persuade her to give an interview for a radio programme. Subsequently, she has given a couple of interviews through which we have come across some more information about her singing career.
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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.
While surfing on the internet last night, I came across a reference to the book ‘The Tenth Rasa : An Anthology of Indian Nonsense’ (2007). The title of the book evoked interest in me but there was no way to know in what context the word ‘nonsense’ was used. I could not locate an E-version or abridged version of this book on the internet but found a review of this book. The book is all about Indian nonsensel literature – prose, poetry, jingles which has a rich history in oral and folk forms. Most of them have been passed on to the next generation by words of mouth. It is a nonsense literature from the point of view of laureates belonging to the elite society for whom the literature has to be meaningful. In that way, the term ‘nonsense’ seems to have been used for meaningless literature. According to the authors of this book, nonsense literature is the base for sensible literature as the former is intuitive and flows quite naturally like the relationship between mother and child.
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Mera antar ek mandir hai tera
Posted on: January 22, 2013
- In: Dev Anand present without lip syncing | Dev Anand songs | Devnagri script lyrics by Sudhir | expression of love | Feelings of heart | Guest posts | Lata solo | Lata song | Lyrics contributed by readers | Post by Sadanand Kamath | Songs of 1970s (1971 to 1980) | Songs of 1971 | Yearwise breakup of songs
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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.
Under the banner of Navketan ( Navketan Films, Navketan International and Navketan Enterprises), there were many films which have become immortals. Films like ‘Nau Do Gyarah (1957), ‘Kaala Baazar (1960), ‘Tere Ghar Ke Saamne’ (1963), ‘Guide’ (1965) and ‘Jewel Thief’ (1967) have been known for the good story and screen play, good music and fast paced direction from Vijay Anand in particular, the song picturisation in these films. Each of his films germinated from new ideas.
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Ik shab ke musaafir hain ham to
Posted on: January 20, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Among the film producers and directors of early days of talky films, Kidar Sharma was one among a few producer-directors who evoked my interest in knowing him. My information about him was limited to what I had known from print media and interviews on Doordarshan in 70s and 80s. He was known for introducing new faces like Raj Kapoor, Madhubala, Geeta Bali in the Hindi film industry who subsequently attained the star status. He also introduced Snehal Bhatkar and Roshan as music directors. Kidar Sharma was a multifaceted personality – painter, photographer, story/screen play/dialogue writer, poet, lyricist, actor, director and producer as I came to know much later when I read his autobiography ‘ The One and Lonely Kidar Sharma’ (2002).
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Ae jazba e dil gar main chaahoon
Posted on: January 18, 2013
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 watched the movie ‘In Custody’ ( Urdu title : ‘Muhafiz’, 1994) on the internet. The film was produced under the banner of Merchant-Ivory Productions and directed by Ismail Merchant. Probably it was a bilingual film – in English and Hindi/Urdu. The star cast included Shashi Kapoor, Shabhana Azmi, Om Puri, Neena Gupta, Sushma Seth, Tinnu Anand, Ajay Sahani etc. The film was based on Anita Desai’s English novel by the same name. A pleasant surprise to me was that the film had 4 ghazals composed jointly by two well known ustads – Ustad Zakir Hussain and Ustaad Sultan Khan in the style reminiscence of the compositions of 50s and 60s. After all, it is a period film. Of the four ghazals, three ghazals are of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
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Kaaga re jaa re jaa re
Posted on: January 17, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
Until 1970, I was only aware of old Hindi film songs from popular films like ‘Mahal’ (1949), ‘Barsaat’ (1949),’Malhar’ (1951),’Baiju Bawara’ (1952), ‘Ashiana’ (1952), ‘Patita’ (1953), ‘Anarkali’ (1953), ‘Seema’ (1955) and many more of such films. It was only when I was initiated by a friend into some lesser known gems from the films which I have never heard of, my interest in such songs grew. My friend used to arrange periodic meetings of like minded persons, mostly in his house. He had a mind boggling collections of such songs in 78 RPM gramophone records ( I guess, it was nearly 1000 in numbers). He had also had some audio cassettes containing lesser known songs recorded from Radio Ceylon and also from 78 RPM records held by some of his friends. During those meetings, he would select some rare songs and play on his Gerard record changer attached to his radiogram followed by discussions. Since I was a novice in this segment of old Hindi film songs, I was only a listener to those discussions. Later, I became aware of the fact that behind tha facade of popular old Hindi film songs, there exists a big store of lesser known jewels.
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Chupke se na jaa o man ke raaja
Posted on: January 16, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
We have been discussing in this blog scores of songs from lesser known films which are gems but lost out soon after those films failed miserably at the box office. A few among those films even failed to get released. Surely, the producers and financiers of these films must have lost the money they invested. But in the event, the performances of other artists associated with such films went unnoticed. Music Director Vinod was one of such artists who despite the phenomenal success of the film ‘Ek Thhi Ladki’ (1949), could not sustain the success for long as most of his subsequent films did not fare well at the box office despite having melodious songs composed by him for those films. Those songs went out of circulation and faded as quickly as the respective films. Thanks to internet, we now have access to those gems to be shared with the lovers of old Hindi film songs.
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Main in phoolon sang doloon re
Posted on: January 12, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
In K L Saigal’s films, the songs sung by most of other singers remained on the periphery as compared to his magic spelled songs. Even on Radio Ceylon’s programme on old film songs which used to be broadcasted between 7.30-8.00 a.m. in olden days, I rarely heard songs of other singers in K L Saigal’s films while K L Saigal’s song used to be the final song of the programme. Take for example songs of ‘My Sister’ (1944). There are at least two beautiful solo songs sung by Utpala Sen but as compared with Saigal’s four songs which were hugely popular in my younger days, I had not heard any of her songs from this film until I bought one 78 RPM gramophone record in early 70s on which one side of the record had ‘jal jaane do is duniya ko’. I heard her other song from the film only last year.
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Lo phir chaand nikal aaya
Posted on: January 11, 2013
This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a regular contributor to this blog.
In Hindi film industry, more than the talent in the chosen field, one needs to be saleable in terms of box office success to become a successful artist. In addition, one needs to have a godfather in the Hindi film industry like a producer/director belonging to a big banner film production company. In the sphere of music direction, there were many talented maestros in the 50s and 60s who composed some memorable songs for the Hindi films. But they could not sustain themselves for long thus failing to make it to the big league of music directors of Hindi film industry. They did not have godfathers in the film industry. Some of them did not become saleable despite churning out beautiful songs.
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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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