Best duets

Best songs of 1940: Wrap Up 3

The Award for the Best Duet of 1940 goes to?

If you look at the broad statistics in my Overview Post on the best songs of 1940, you would see out of total 351 songs in the year, whose singers are identified, the ratio of male solos, female solos and duets are 1:1.47:1.19. This may not follow the long-term average of male solos to female solos to duets, but it does follow the general trend that female solos far outnumber male solos, and duets too are generally much more than male solos. Whether 19% differential of the duets over male solos is statistically significant or not is best left to the professional statistician. But I have mentioned several times that in music the impact of a particular singer is not necessarily commensurate with statistics. This phenomenon was particularly pronounced in the era of KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick when their songs pulled their weight much above their numbers.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Female bonding and their duets

Commemorating the International Women’s Day with female duets

Men may not be from Mars nor women from Venus, but there is a fundamental difference in the way the two genders bond with each other. In semi-urban settings at a party, the two genders automatically segregate, each forming their own group. We generally ascribe it to patriarchy. But at a recent get-together for three days at a resort with colleagues, including women colleagues and their spouses, we were at a dinner hosted by a local friend. As the number of guests increased, there was a need for some to move into another room to decongest. We didn’t realise there was anything unusual when men moved into another room until, after some time, the ladies led by some feisty colleagues trooped into the room slamming the gender segregation. Patriarchy surely does not explain this.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1943: Wrap Up 3

And the award for the best duet goes to?

More balapan ke sathi-Dheere dheere aa re baadalThere is something about duets which make them exceptional. If you take a re-look at my Overview Post, six out of the eight ‘Special Songs’ are duets. There are just so many varieties in them. For example, the titles of Bhojan ke nazaarein hain and Main to Agre se joota laya re are parodies of well-known songs of just a year or two earlier. Both the songs are medley parody songs which tests your knowledge or recall of vintage songs which became roaringly popular. There are some sung by music directors who were not quite known as singers. There were some others which were funky for different reasons: serious singers singing absurdly funny songs and so on.

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Best songs of 1944: Wrap Up 3

And the Award for the Best Duet goes to?

In my list of 81 MEMORABLE SONGS in the Overview Post on the best songs of 1944, I counted 17 duets. This is quite a small number, but as we have seen in the reviews of other years, duets always punch above their weight. There is something special about combination of different voices, generally a male and a female, and some very unlikely combinations. The eight ‘Special Songs’ in the overview post included six duets, only two of which were in the list of Memorable Songs. Remaining four were discoveries made between compilation of the Memorable Songs and writing the post. In the vintage years, we never cease to make new discoveries, and every time some beautiful song turns up, it gives immense joy and makes this exercise worthwhile. After the Wrap Up 1 on the best male solos and the Wrap Up 2 on the best female solos, let us discuss the best duets of 1944.

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Ravi’s best duets for Rafi

Ravi-RafiIn my last post I covered Ravi’s best solo songs for Rafi. He composed about 250 songs for Rafi, including duets. It is a huge number in absolute as well as relative terms. Only two, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Shankar-Jaikishan, have undisputedly composed more Rafi songs than him, as can be expected. Chitragupta is in the same range or marginally more than him. About 42% of these songs are duets, including male-male duets, and songs having more than two singers. Over 100 duets is a significant number, and several of them are so good, no discussion on Ravi’s songs for Rafi is complete without mentioning his duets.

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Duets of OP Nayyar: Part 2

Guest article by Ravindra Kelkar

(Of the 223 total duets composed by OP Nayyar, the most conspicuous are male-female duets in which the male voice is Rafi and the female voice, either Geeta Dutt or Shamshad Begum or Asha Bhosle. These are 119 in number, and were the subject matter of Ravindra Kelkar’s last post on OP Nayyar’s duets. That leaves 104 duets, including 60 ‘other’ MF duets – Rafi with other female singers, and male singer other than Rafi – and 44 duets of mixed type, i.e. male-male, female-female or more than two singers. Thus, in spite of the smaller number, these 104 duets present immense variety. With this second part of the two-part post on OP Nayyar’s duets, Mr Kelkar completes the comprehensive review of OP Nayyar’s duets. Thank you, Mr Kelkar for your painstaking effort. – AK)

OP NayyarIn part 1 we listened to Rafi-Geeta Dutt, Rafi-Shamshad Begum and Rafi-Asha Bhosle duets. Now let us listen to some other combinations.

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Duets of OP Nayyar: Part 1

Guest article by Ravindra Kelkar

(SoY readers would recall that Ravindra Kelkar has been making valuable contributions on OP Nayyar through his guest articles and, thus, filling up a gap in SoY. He has contributed three articles so far: ‘Three distinct phases of OP Nayyar’; OP Nayyar-Geeta Dutt: A peerless combination’; and OP Nayyar’s influence on other music directors. As we inch towards the conclusion of the series, Mr Kelkar covers OP Nayyar’s duets in two parts. The first part is on his most conspicuous duets in which Rafi is the male voice, combining with his three most important female singers – Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Asha Bhosle, in chronological order.

Mr Kelkar observes OPN was among the four best music directors in composing duets. His choice of musical instruments, his rhythm and special features like either the male or the female singer entering late in the song, giving it an effect of solo, make OPN unique. The romanticism in his duets was a reflection of his fascination with women, observes Mr Kelkar. Thank you Mr Kelkar for another excellent piece. – AK)

OP NayyarI consider C Ramachandra, SD Burman, Shankar Jaikishan and OP Nayyar as the four best music directors (MDs) in composing duets. Of course, all other MDs have composed outstanding duets, but the sheer numbers and variety make these four MDs stand apart.

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Best songs of 1948: Wrap Up 3

And the Songs of Yore Award for the Best Duet goes to?

Kyun unhe dil diyaAs per the long-term average, female solos outnumber male solos by a big margin, with duets somewhere in between. The same is true for the year 1948. My list of 114/115 MEMORABLE SONGS in the Overview post has the following break-up:

 

Male solos        –  26
Female solos    –  53
Duets                  –  36
       TOTAL    –   115

Besides the significant number, the duets present  interesting variety of combinations of singers. This category also includes all male or female duets, and songs by more than two singers (which could be all male or female or mixed). I count the chorus songs in which there is only one identifiable dominating voice as a solo of that singer.

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Asymmetric Duets

Guest article by Subodh Agrawal

(I have often mentioned that duets, though far less in number than solo songs, present a fascinating variety of music. One variety is on account of the lesser known female singers getting a chance to sing with major playback singers like Rafi and Mukesh, and we are richer for that because we get some absolutely fabulous songs minus the Mangeshkar sisters. The other and, perhaps more interesting, variety is on account of the experimentation the music directors do in composition. On this blog there has been detailed discussion on a number of occasions about the duets in which one singer just hums, or has only a few words or just a couple of lines to sing. I developed a Duet Balance Index for analysing this kind of asymmetry in my post titled ‘Some thoughts on mathematical-taxonomic analysis of Hindi films and songs’. That dealt with what may be called ‘airtime asymmetry’. Another interesting asymmetry is ‘tune asymmetry’.

In this guest article, Subodh Agrawal takes a look at such asymmetric duets. I am sure readers will welcome his taking a break from classical songs. Thank you Subodh for another interesting and ‘different’ article. – AK) –

I am taking a break from classical songs in films to write on this topic, which arose from a discussion on AK’s post on duets of Talat and Asha. Duets are common in Hindi film music. I don’t have the encyclopaedic knowledge of Mr Vaishnav, Mr Bhatia or Mr Venkataraman to do a detailed analysis, but my hunch is that male-female duets would account for about one third of all songs.

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Shankar Jaikishan’s duets (2)

Shankar JaikishanIn the first part of Shankar-Jaikishan’s duets, I covered the songs in which either Mukesh or Rafi sang with a female singer. They being the predominant singers, one would think that that post would cover most of the famous duets composed by them. But SJ were hugely talented and diversified, and played a key role in introducing or boosting the career of many singers. Subir Sen, who was among the top singers of Bengali songs, is mainly their gift to Hindi film music. Mukesh’s forays into acting and film production gave an opening for Manna Dey as the voice of Raj Kapoor, and SJ created some iconic duets like Pyar hua iqaraar hua, Aa ja sanam madhu chaandni mein hum, Ye raat bhigi bhigi etc. Even though SD Burman gave Manna Dey his first big hit Upar gagan vishal, and was his uncle KC Dey’s protégé, Manna Dey credited SJ more for giving him prominence. We have also seen that SJ used Talat Mahmood’s voice in at least nine films, more than most composers, though they may not be counted among the elite group who gave the best songs for him. They have used Hemant Kumar sparingly, but they managed to compose a couple of his greatest duets.

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