Posts Tagged ‘NFS’
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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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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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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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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 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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Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs 
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