A tribute to old Hindi film music. Songs of the 30s through the 60s.

Songs on themes

Romancing the Stranger

February 19, 2021

For quite some time songs like Ajnabi, tum jaane pahchaane se lagte ho, and Kuchh ajanbi se aap hain, kuchh ajanbi se hum have been buzzing like bee in my head for an inexplicable reason. Then an incredible coincidence happened. One day I decided to browse through my books collected over the years that had […]

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Fanciful ideas about breaching embankments (6)

June 25, 2020

Guest article by Ashwin Bhandarkar (The regular readers of SoY are aware that Ashwin Bhandarkar is a BITS Pilani and IIM Calcutta alumnus and is an IT professional based in Pune. What makes him exceptional is that he has had over ten years of formal training in Hindustani classical music. This (Pun)dit (Pun)-e-kar, in a […]

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Twins Phenomena In Bollywood

May 29, 2020

Guest article by DP Rangan (The prolific guest writer DP Rangan now writes on the twins in Hindi films, some generic tropes of these films, and gives a selection of songs from some twin films. The highlight of this post is some great songs of the vintage era. This post too has been with me […]

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Baaja that was Harmonium that was Music

April 22, 2020

From time to time the importance of music instruments in our film songs have come in for some serious discussion on SoY. Some years ago, a reader Rohit Kumar (who seems to have gone off-radar) mentioned the strong association of some music directors with specific instruments, such as Roshan and flute, OP Nayyar and sarangi, […]

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The lost world of piano when it was more than a musical instrument

March 26, 2020

Do you remember when we last saw a piano song in Hindi movies? In my recollection, Parineeta (2005) was the last movie which had a piano song, Piyu bole, in the classic style. And there is a reason for that: the story is set in the early 20th century in which the hero was from […]

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‘Vandya Vande Mataram’: The story of a Song Perennial

January 26, 2020

Guest article by N Venkataraman to celebrate 70th Anniversary of the Republic (During our days of innocence we learnt in the school that ‘Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He’ was our ‘National Anthem’ and ‘Vande Mataram’ was our ‘National Song’, both of equal reverence, and we sung both with equal fervour on special occasions. When […]

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Chorus Songs in the Hindi Films of Yore: Part 3

May 26, 2019

Guest article by Shalan Lal (After the earlier two articles covering the 1930s and 1940s, Shalan Lal concludes her three-part thesis on chorus songs with the Golden Decade of the 1950s. As we have come to expect from her, these articles do not merely present the representative songs of the period, but also take us […]

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Chorus Songs in the Hindi Films of Yore: Part 2

May 14, 2019

Guest article by Shalan Lal (In the first part of her three-part dissertation on chorus songs in the films of yore, Shalan Lal covered the first decade of the 1930s, dominated by three major studios: The New Theatres of Calcutta, Bombay Talkies of Bombay and Prabhat Film Company of Poona. This was published on 2 […]

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Chorus Songs in the Hindi Films of Yore: Part 1

May 2, 2019

Guest article by Shalan Lal (Readers are aware, when Shalan Lal writes on a topic she writes a research paper as if for an academic seminar, even if it is for a blog like ‘Songs of Yore’. She does a similar comprehensive work to discuss the chorus songs of the films of yore. This is […]

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Barahmasa in film songs

March 21, 2019

Wishing a very Happy Holi to all the readers When the first monsoon rains quench the thirst of the parched earth, and dry rivulets, water bodies and ponds get filled with water, and green shoots emerge from dry plants and trees, and the farmers rush to the slushy fields for transplantation, it’s a time for […]

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