Guest article by Piyush M Pandya (Gujarati) and Ashok M Vaishnav (English translation)
(Continuing their series on Arrangers and Musicians, now the guest authors Piyush M Pandya and Ashok M Vaishnav throw the spotlight on one of the most respected musicians, Goody Seervai, who became synonymous with piano accordion. The songs they have mentioned have been our eternal favourites, but for most of us it would be the first time that we would be able to associate with the accordion player who sculpted these songs with his tunes. Thank you Piyushji and Ashokji for another excellent article, 11th in the series. – AK)
It was after 1943 that the new crop of music directors started using western musical instruments in the orchestration of the Hindi film songs. C Ramchandra, because of his association with trumpet player Chic Chocolate and jazz drummer Kawas Lord, went in almost overdrive by experimenting with using western tunes in the songs. Music directors like Anil Biswas, Naushad, S D Burman etc. further expanded the range by combining Indian classical and folk music with western music and western musical instruments like violin, cello, guitar etc. It was this trend in orchestration of Hindi film music that led the search for the instrumentalists in hotels, clubs and functions of the communities in big cities like Bombay and Calcutta, where strong culture of bands consisting of Goanese and Parsi instrumentalists had developed very well. It was at one of such bands that Chocolate and Lord met Goody Seervai and were impressed by Seervai’s style of playing the accordion. They immediately introduced Seervai to C Ramchandra and Naushad.READ THE FULL ARTICLE
A seven year old lad of Jalalabad (now in Pakistan) is busy compiling songs in Urdu. He has developed a flair for shayari, but his skill is frowned upon by his unsympathetic family. He continues in the same vein and pours out more songs. When he is around nine years old he comes across an individual with similar disposition named Amar Chand and has intimate discussions with him on his passion. Recognising the talent hidden in the boy, he is all encouragement and asks him to change his name and suggests Qamar (meaning Chand). The imaginative boy coins the name Qamar Jalalabadi (adopting the village Jalalabad where he lived) for himself and is known by this moniker thereafter.