On the eighth anniversary of Songs of Yore, I am going to break an unwritten code I have tried to follow – keeping private and public apart. I have met SoY regulars in the NCR from time to time, and also those living in other places during my travels to the cities where I knew an active member lived, but I have never mentioned these meetings. However, this year the meetings have been very special, and KS Bhatia has alluded to the get-together last month in his comments. This makes me overcome my reserve.
Year: 2018
Greatness in the shadow of the giants: Bulo C Rani
A tribute to Bulo C Rani on his 25th death anniversary (6 May 1920 – 24 May 1993)
My first reaction to Bulo C Rani when I heard Humein to loot liya mil ke husnwaalon ne was, how a lady could create such a masculine qawwali. The next marker by which I recognised Bulo C Rani was Ghunghat ke pat khol re tohe piya piya milenge and other delicate bhajans from Jogan (1950), sung so plaintively by Geeta Roy (Dutt). These were more like being composed by a lady with a sonorous name like Bulo C Rani, who could empathise with a character like Meerabai. Gradually, I became aware of the tremendous variety in singers and type of songs composed by this music director. It was much later that I came to know that he was a Sindhi gentleman by the name Bulo Chandiram Ramchandani.
The path, the traveller, the journey and the destination
We are told that to succeed in life we have to have a goal, and we have to take the right path to reach there. But how do we get to the right path? You reach a fork in life, you choose a path and that makes all the difference. Had you chosen the other path your life would have panned out in an entirely different way. Our ancients said महाजनो येन गत: स पन्था:।The right path is the one that has been trodden by the great men. But Javed Akhtar does not like to go where everyone goes; he does not like travelling on the worn-out path.
Talat Mahmood: A Mesmeriser
Guest article by DP Rangan as a tribute to Talat Mahmood on his 20th death anniversary (24 February 1924 – 9 May 1998) (We know all the famous songs of Talat Mahmood. Most of them are already covered on SoY. But that is not a deterrent to a real Talat-fan like our indefatigable DP Rangan,READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Songs of stars
For the SoY regulars, the title of this post may come as a surprise, because DP Rangan has already written an exhaustive post on songs on stars. That was about stars in the sky (i.e. तारे/सितारे). However, there are another kind of stars around whom the film world revolves. They have names like you and me, but when they become too big, they acquire special monikers like ‘the Great Trinity’, ‘the Dream Girl’, ‘the Big B’, ‘the Jumping Jack’, ‘the Phenomenon’, ‘the Three Khans’ and so on. From the media we know that they inhabit the terra firma, but for common folks like us, they are really the ‘Stars from Another Sky’.
Songs that tell a story
Songs have been an integral part of our films right from the very first talkie Alam Ara (1931). The common understanding is that music had been an integral part of our folk, classical and theatre traditions, and it was a natural extension to films. Our early films were largely based on our existing theatre forms. Very soon film songs assumed an identity of their own; they could be enjoyed decoupled from the films they were set in. Gramophone records and radio became the primary source of propagation and circulation of film songs to people, and soon they became the most identifiable feature of popular culture.
Best songs of 1947: And the winners are?
It was the best of years, it was the worst of years. The euphoria of independence was marred by the trauma of partition, the communal frenzy sweeping large swathes of the country, the bloodshed, and the largest mass migration in history from one side of the border to the other. The film world too could not remain untouched by these events. Many Muslim music directors and actors chose to go to the other side or would move shortly – Ghulam Haider, Rafiq Ghazanavi, Firoz Nizami, Khursheed Anwar, Noorjehan etc. It was a sad year for another final departure – the greatest actor-singer ever KL Saigal passed away on 18 January 1947 at a young age of 43. But the year also saw the debut of Lata Mangeshkar as a ‘playback’ singer in Aap Ki Sewa Mein.
Tasveer exhibits of Bollywood
Guest article by DP Rangan
(A lesser mortal, when asked to write on songs on ‘tasveer’, would have made some general observations about pictures, and mentioned some songs which contained the word ‘tasveer’. Not DP Rangan, as we know well by now. Mr Rangan takes us to pre-historic days when mankind would have started making some pictorial representations by sketching on rocks and caves. Thank you Mr Rangan for another article, in a long series of guest articles, loaded with information . – AK)
Living beings emerged from the primordial chemical bath some three billion years ago on Earth and human beings seem to be the latest in the ladder of life. Unlike other living entities who were solely concerned with their day to day survival and perpetuation of their species, humans, because of their extra sensory perception and intellect, sought to understand the surroundings in which they evolved. They are the only species not to live in harmony with nature, but try to twist it to suit their living conditions with disastrous consequences for all. They seem to have developed a sense of ego and creativity all along and exhibit it in some form or another. They developed the art of drawing on rocks leaving behind memories of the environment in which they evolved. Thus was born the art of sketches and drawing and tasveer was a by-product of this trait.
Parody songs: Part 2
(I thank Ashok M Vaishnav for very generously sharing his compilation of parody songs with me – AK)
In Part 1 of this post I covered the parody songs based on a single song. This seems to have later led to the practice of parodying the mukhada or a short portion of a number of songs and blending them into a single medley of varied tunes. There is more creativity involved in this because the music director has to ensure that the output does not become a hotchpotch of unconnected tunes. But if it is done well, it is obviously more fun. The more the merrier.
Parody songs: Part 1
Wishing the readers a very Happy Holi
(I have been compiling parody songs for a while, when I got a mail from Ashok M Vaishnav that he has also been doing such a list, and whether he could write a guest article for SoY on this. No one does compilation and analysis better than him, but he very generously allowed me to go ahead with my article. His list has been very useful. Therefore, I start with acknowledging and thanking Ashokji. – AK)
As is commonly known, parody is an exaggerated imitation of a person, song, literature or performance to produce a comic effect. It seems parody has existed from the earliest days of dramatic performance. Wikipedia states that according to Aristotle, Hegemon of Thasos was the inventor of a kind of parody; by slightly altering the wording in well-known poems he transformed the sublime into the ridiculous. In ancient Greek literature, a parodia was a narrative poem imitating the style and prosody of epics “but treating light, satirical or mock-heroic subjects”. The ancient Indian treatise on dramaturgy, Natyashstra by Bharat Muni, is of similar antiquity. Though it mentions Prahasan as one of the ten types of play, from its definition it seems to be a low form of performance – something like burlesque – and not quite parody as we know today.