Guest article by Piyush M Pandya (Gujarati original) and Ashok M Vaishnav (English translation)
(The “Lords”, i.e. the father Cawas Lord and his two sons – Kersi and Burjor Lord – have lorded over the instrumental music in Hindi film songs right from the beginning of the talkies till the 1980s when the era of live orchestra by musicians and arrangers in the music room was caming to en end. The SOY regulars will recall the review of Greg Booth’s “Behind the Curtain“. Therefore, it is very befitting that the guest authors, Piyush M Pandya and Ashok M Vaishnav, now write on the most illustrious family of instrumentalists in the film music world. The Lords have seen the zenith of the sculptors of film music to their decline and disappearance of an era of how music was made in our films. Thank you Piyushji and Ashokji for another excellent article in the series on the Arrangers and Musicians. – AK)
Even in the absence of authentic statistics, there is unanimity among Hindi film historians that, from 1947 to 1987, one or other member of the Lord family – father Cawas Lord, the elder son Kersi Lord and the younger son Burjor Lord – has, on an average, played in every third song recorded in Bombay. Jazz and Latino music became integral to Bombay film music largely due to the Lords.
Cawas Lord
Cawas Lord (1911 – 2007) was born in a very strict and traditional Parsi family from Pune. Young Cawas was so much interested in music that at the age of 12 he migrated to Mumbai. His music career at Bombay commenced with playing military drums and bagpipes under various military bandleaders. By the ’30s Cawas Lord had started playing percussion instruments for earliest talkie films. He is said to have arranged the background score for India’s fist talkie film Alam Ara (1931).READ THE FULL ARTICLE