Guest article by Piyush M Pandya (Gujarati original) and Ashok M Vaishnav (English translation)
(Ramprasad Sharma may be an unfamiliar name to many, but Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo were the biggest guys on the film music scene. They broke all the records: for number of films for which they composed music, total number of songs by them, total number of songs for the biggest singers, Lata Mangeshkar and Rafi. They went through the grind, climbing all the ladders from the beginning: musician, arranger, assistant music director and finally the pinnacle. Pyarelal was the son of Ramprasad Sharma, who was a highly respected musician, scholar, music director and teacher in the 40s and early 50s. His other sons too, namely Gorakhnath, Ganesh, Anand, and Naresh; and grandsons Monty and Mithun all came into music.
Ramprasad’s pupils include a galaxy of well-known names who came to him to learn notation. He did not achieve great commercial success as a music director, and had to work for other music directors like Naushad and C Ramchandra. The trumpet in ‘Suhani raat dhal chuki’ was played by Ramprasad Sharma. I profusely thank the guest authors Piyush M Pandya and Ashok M Vaishnav for covering an important personality and his family in the series on Arrangers and Musicians. – AK)
The title of this episode may sound like a typical name we were used to seeing on the signboards in the markets in any town during the 1950s to ‘70s. The signboard would further read “Wholesale Merchants of Grains” or “Wholesale Cloth merchants” etc. Well, what has that to do with this series about musicians and arrangers? Is the present episode about some such firm which probably had been associated with ‘selling’ music instruments?
Well, No. Ours is a narrative of three generations of artists who have been practicing musicians in the world of Hindi film music: Ramprasad Sharma, a complete music director, researcher, composer and arranger with an in-depth knowledge of all known musical instruments, their notations and playing techniques in Indian as well as western styles; his sons: Pyarelal, Gorakhnath, Ganesh, Anand, Naresh; and the grandsons: Monty and Mithun. As is the case with most of the second and third tiers of artists like arrangers and musicians under the label ‘Music Director’, these names would not make sense with most of us, unless we further qualify Pyarelal with the suffix of ‘Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo’.
Ramprasad Sharma
Ramprasad Sharma (1900 -1995) belonged to Gorakhpur in the then United Provinces (present day Uttar Pradesh). The band master of Bharatpur State recognised Ramprasad’s flare for instrumental music. He played the trumpet here. He then played in Agra Military Band. This groomed him into the art of music arrangement to rise to the position of Band Master in a circus. He toured Delhi, Lahore and Calcutta with the circus. He settled for some time in Calcutta and worked for Columbia and New Theatres. At that stage, he mastered playing ten instruments and had acquired good knowledge of intricacies of classical raags.READ THE FULL ARTICLE