Year: 2022

Khayyam at the Mountain Peak (2): Songs sans Pahadi

Second part of my two-part tribute to Khayyam (18.2.1927–19.8.2019) on his third Remembrance Day

Once the omission of Khayyam was brought to my notice by a reader, I realised any tribute to him could not be limited to one part. One can divide his work by the period, or by the singers, both are sensible approaches. He created great music from 1950 to 1982. This is a long span, not many of his stalwart peers had such a long productive life. He was not among the top music directors by the conventional pecking order. But he remained at the top without compromising quality, without joining the rat-race, without caring for the current trend. He created his own trend, which was classical, elegant, soulful and deeply moving.

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Book Review: ‘Hindi Cine Raag Encyclopaedia’ Vol. 3, 4 & 5

Hindi Cine Raag Encyclopedia Vol 3, 4 & 5

Hindi Cine Raag Encyclopaedia
(Reference Edition Raagwise: Vol. 3, 4 & 5)
Author: KL Pandey
Sangeet Shilp Prakashan, Lucknow
First edition 2022
Hardcover ₹4800 on Amazon

A passionate lover of Hindi film music, who has deep interest in classical music too, asks two different types of questions: One, which raag(s) this favourite song is based on; Two, which are the famous songs based on this particular raag? These are very different questions, and can be conveniently searched only if there are reliable sources compiled on the two different parameters. On the internet a respected site chandrakantha.com gives links for Index of Song Titles (and their underlying raags) and Index of Raags (and songs based on that raag).

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Khayyam at the Mountain Peak (1): Songs on Pahadi

A tribute to Khayyam (18.2.1927–19.8.2019) on his third Remembrance Day

A reader mentioned some time ago that Khayyam has not been covered on SOY. Then I realised that the only post I have included under his name in the side-roll is devoted to his wife, Jagjit Kaur who sang most of her songs under his baton. This is an obvious omission. Khayyam, though not in the race for top billing, always created top class music right through the Golden Era when hundred flowers bloomed, to the post-70s dominated by the triumvirate of RD Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Kalyanji-Anandji.

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Songs of Sarcasm

Ek chatur naarIf the world only comprised narcissists at one extreme, and the most polite and courteous who profusely praise others at the other end, it would be a very boring place. Things are never black and white. There are various shades of grey in life. In our interactions we often cannot resist the temptation of putting-down a pompous person by a clever repartee, prick his ego by a smart one-liner, use various figures of speech from irony, pun, tongue-in-cheek statements, sarcasm to trenchant scorn. Even with dear friends or respected persons we often indulge in mild leg-pulling and harmless humour.

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Rafi’s songs with some unrecognised composers

Guest article by Sivanandam Palamadai as a tribute to Rafi on his 42nd Remembrance Day (24 December 1924 – 31 July 1980)

(Rafi was the most dominant male playback singer of the Golden Era of film music. Yet he remained an unassuming, simple-hearted person with malice to none. The stories of his kindness and support to unrecognised music directors are legion. If his singing could help a struggling music director, he was willing to sing free for him. He sang some of his unforgettable songs for now-forgotten music directors.

Sivanandam Palamadai is relatively a new member of SOY, but is already an active participant. He is a passionate fan of Rafi and has been writing regularly for a forum dedicated to Rafi. When he offered to write on Rafi for SOY, we tossed ideas back and forth. I suggested this topic to him which can be worthy as a debut article on SOY.

Mr Palamadai is in his late 50s. He is a native of Tamil Nadu, but has lived in Pune for over 25 years. He has been a marketing professional all his working life, now in semi-retirement by choice to be in control of his career options. He is a keen listener of all kinds of music: film songs, non-film songs of Hindi and other languages, Hindustani, Carnatic and Western classical music. It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new guest writer with this superb article on Rafi’s songs for some unrecognised music directors, as a tribute to Rafi on his 42nd Remembrance Day. – AK)

RafiThere is a famous quote from Shakespeare’s play ‘Twelfth Night’: Some are born great; some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. With due apologies to Shakespeare, we should add one more category to this: “Some are unfortunate in this world to be denied their greatness!!”

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Duets (+) of Mukesh: With Male Singers

Guest article by Ahok M Vaishnav as a tribute to Mukesh on his 99th Birth Anniversary (b. July 22, 1923 – d. August 27, 1976)

(Once SOY-veteran N Venkataraman remarked that there has been a post on Mukesh every year. If it was there, I or a guest author must have had something new to write on. It was not mechanical. The enthusiastic reader-cum-guest author Ashok M Vaishnav has noticed that a post on Mukesh’s duets with male singers is missing.

One reason for this omission is that MM duets are very few in number compared to the conventional MF duets, and these do not cause same waves as MF duets. But for a gold prospector like Ashokji, this is no deterrent. The result is a very thorough article on Mukesh’s duets with some male singers.

As the SOY regulars are aware, Ashokji is a retired engineer and now a freelance management training professional. He has been a prolific writer on this blog. Thank you Ashokji for yet another superb article on Mukesh as a tribute to him on his 99th Birth Anniversary. – AK)

Mukesh and his male co-singersFilms in India, by and large, revolve around different themes of love between a boy and a girl. As such, songs come in very handy as a very strong and direct, easy-to-comprehend, medium to express the different shades of feelings of love. Traditionally, the solo songs occupied the space of prime importance. During vintage era this was more a necessity because the singers were generally actors themselves. Moreover, the recording technology also was in the development stage, which made recording a duet song with two vastly different musical qualities of pitch and timbre of a male and female voice was quite difficult in comparison to the recording of a solo song.

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Vasant Desai Part 2 (post-1950s): His male singers

Vasant DesaiIn Vasant Desai Part 1 pertaining to the vintage years (1930s and 40s), we were introduced to his multifaceted talents, including his acting and singing. As per N Venkataraman he had sung a total of 37 songs in Hindi and Marathi. We all agreed that he was an outstanding singer, but surprisingly his singing career came to a complete halt in 1944. The era of the great male playback years was a few years away. The difference between vintage and golden era (post-1950s) is not merely chronological, but also the singing style and emergence of new great playback singers: Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Geeta Dutt, Asha Bhosle etc.

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In praise of a woman’s beauty

Chaudahvin ka chaand hoA keen reader S. Joseph often suggests some themes to write on. He once wrote to me that there were many songs of a man praising the beauty of a woman, and also, somewhat less, of a woman praising a man, and it might be a nice theme for the blog. I felt diffident precisely for this reason – that this was too common and almost all the bloggers I follow have written on this. But I now realise, after ‘Songs of narcissists’ some balancing has become necessary lest you should get the impression that the world is full of people obsessed with themselves.

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Songs of Narcissists

NarcissusNarcissism is seen as some kind of personality disorder denoting an exaggerated sense of self-importance, arrogant, self-centred behaviour and need for excessive attention and admiration. Narcissus in the Greek mythology was cursed by the gods to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. When he saw his reflection he became transfixed in love, he slowly pined away and died. If anyone calls you a narcissist, you will become defensive, and vehemently protest. But my views have changed after I became an admirer of the girl from Gujarat (GFG) since she decided to marry herself, as she could not think of anyone she would love as much as she loved herself. It is trite that one has to love oneself to be happy. A low self-esteem would make a person brooding, sad and a misfit in the society. No one admires a person who pines Ab mera kaun sahara or Teri duniya mein dil lagta nahin, wapas bula le. You would much rather prefer a wild person who prances around with Yaar chulbula hai.

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Songs of Yore completes twelve years

Songs of Yore_12 yearsIn normal times, completing twelve years of blogging would have been a matter of joy, and possibly a bit of crowing. That would look quite out of place in these unusual times. We thought that we would be getting some respite from Covid. But now there is a scare of the fourth wave hitting the country. It is clear by now, the scientists are as clueless as we all are. Otherwise, we would not have got conflicting signals: It would be very mild, it would be like any normal flu; Don’t take it lightly, it has mutated into extremely virulent variants, you have to continue following Covid-appropriate behaviour. Masking is the only remedy, make it a part of your life; masking creates a sense of fear. A friend tells me, forget everything, enjoy your normal life, अधिक से अधिक क्या होगा, मर जाओगे, in the long run we are all dead. But I am not in a hurry to reach there.

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