1939

And the SOY Award for the Best Duet of 1939 goes to?

After the Overview Post, Wrap Up 1 on Male Solos, and Wrap Up 2 on the Female Solos, now it is time for the Wrap Up 3 on the Duets. As the readers are aware, I am also concurrently doing the review of the best songs of 1956, which had two separate posts for female solos – one for Lata Mangeshkar, and the other for “Other Female Singers”, therefore, the corresponding number for the best duet in 1956 would be one up, i.e. Wrap Up 4.

The large data follow the same historical long-term average, but we have to contend with KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick. They generally sang solos, and most of their songs are still remembered today. Therefore, the duets do not have the same recall value in 1939, and the number of duets in the year is only marginally more. Some great duets were also included in the Special Songs in the overview post. Let me start with the Readers’ comments.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

And the SOY Award for the Best Female Solo of 1939 goes to?

One can make a general observation about the female solos of 1939. Following the long-term ratio, the female solos outnumber the male solos by a good margin in this year too. But in the era of dominance of KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick, they are still familiar and top of the recall. But female solos in the vintage era suffer in comparison – there was no Saigal or Pankaj Mullick among them. I have earlier observed that there was no Lata Mangeshkar before Lata Mangeshkar. Among the 50/52 MEMORABLE SONGS in the year included in my overview post, the number of female solos is about 23 against 16 by male singers.

The female singing in Vintage Era was full of rich variety, but today it sounds very dated, though I like it a lot. The problem of the Vintage Era female singing is that a larger percentage is unknown. After my Overview Post, and Wrap Up 1 about male solos, now it is time for Wrap Up 2 about female solosREAD THE FULL ARTICLE

In the Vintage Era review of songs, we have reached the end of the 30s. In a stark reminder of our poor record of preserving our legacy, our Resident Scholar, N Venkataraman, gives a stark figure that only 4 Hindi films – Pukar, Aadmi, Dushman, Durga – are available in public domain for viewing. These are from famous production houses: Minerva; Prabhat; New Theatres and Bombay Talkies. Talking of Venkataraman ji, he is a great asset to SOY. In addition to songs, he was very prompt in correcting any inaccuracy in historical (general history) details.

It appears some good quality video links of songs beyond the above four films are available on the YouTube. In my Overview Post, I had given a broad statistics that of the total number of songs in which song titles are known in the year, in less than 40% of the songs singers are known. It is not surprising that so much of our music is just not available. That is no reason for the mental barrier some music lovers feel in accessing the Vintage Era music. But they all have a sense of discovering never heard before gems.

The comments veered over great deal of history of that period, sometimes with a generous dollop of opinions. Overall, a very satisfying discussion. I thank all the participants for their active participation.

Coming back to the Wrap Up 1 about Best Male Solos, this was the era of KL Saigal (Dushman) and Pankaj Mullick (Kapalkundala) and they did sing everlasting songs which are remembered till date. I find Jagmohan’s Mujhe na sapnon se bahlaao is also from this year. This has to be one of his earliest non-film songs, and it is among his most recognizable songs.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Wishing everyone a very Happy 76th Anniversary of our Republic Day

Now we are entering the thirties, the last stretch going back to when it all began. The first talkie film was made in 1931. Most of the early stars of talkie films carried on from the silent era. The change of era also exposed the shortcomings of many silent film superstars in adjusting to the demands of talkie films, mainly in dialogue delivery and singing abilities. Some made a gradual exit. This also sowed the seeds of professional playback singing. The playback technology had been discovered in 1935/1937, but the constraints of recording technology meant that it was yet to be fully operational in practice. All this turmoil meant that the change of era did not herald a complete transition from silent to talkie era. Silent films still continued to be made for quite a good number of years into the talkie era. The year 1939 was the end of the 30s. Therefore by 1939 the last silent film must have been made a few years ago. Here I am not talking about largely silent films like Pushpak (1987) and Black, which were largely silent because of artistic reasons, just as Schindler’s List (1993) was a b&w film.READ THE FULL ARTICLE