1950

Best songs of 1950: Final Wrap Up 5

The SoY Award for the Best Music Director goes to? This year’s detailed review had more songs (152) than in any preceding year, and I had hoped that this would cover most of the noteworthy songs. Nevertheless, the readers added a large number of songs in the comments. This shows that there are a numberREAD THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 4

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Duet goes to? (Wishing Happy Diwali to everyone)

1950 filmsHans recently commented in some other context that duets generally create less impact than solos. This is certainly true of tennis where the doubles players are not counted in the same league as Federers and Djokovics. In the olden days before the open era, it was quite common for the top ranking players (think of John Newcombe and Tony Roche) to be at the top both in singles and doubles. I have mentioned earlier that often the contrasting voices make duets extremely charming. Duets also provide more opportunity to the music director for innovation.

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 3

(After the overview post on the Best songs of 1950, I have written Wrap Up 1 on the best male solos, and Wrap Up 2 on the best female solos by ‘other’ singers.  Continuing the series, here is the third Wrap Up on the best songs of Lata Mangeshkar. – AK)

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to Lata Mangeshkar (?)

Lata MangeshkarIn the three previous yearwise reviews for 1955, 1953 and 1951, the announcement of the Best Female Playback Singer of the Year was an exultant, “The Award goes to Lata..Lata…Lata..Lata Mangeshkar”. This year we had some very strong voices questioning her invincible superiority, though, by and large, she remained the overwhelming favourite for the best female playback singer. Most readers took the trouble of giving separate lists of her best and the best of “other” female singers, as well as a combined list, which had on the average about 4-5 of her songs, and the rest by the others, she, of course, being rated as the overall best. However, in a democracy, minority voices are equally important. The dissent is very categorical, and quite interesting. Therefore, this year’s announcement is suffixed with a question mark in parenthesis.

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 2

And the award for the Best ‘Other’ Female Singer goes to?

Suraiya-Rajkumari-Shamshad Begum-Geeta DuttThis year, too, I faced the familiar dilemma I faced last year while reviewing the best songs of 1951: whether to make a combined list of the best female solos or split it in two – Lata Mangeshkar and ‘Others’. Male solos which I reviewed in my last post do not pose this difficulty. This was best underscored by Mumbaikar 8’s comment: there is not much to wriggle about in male solos. It is both a question of numbers and diversity. The female solos outnumber male solos by a factor of four to one. Within the female solos Lata Mangeshkar had established her position as the frontrunner by miles. As per Venkataramanji’s statistics she had 20% of female solos, in all, in the year, whereas in my Select List she has 32%. The other dominant singers were Geeta Roy and Shamshad Begum accounting for about 41% of the total songs, but in my list they had 31%. Thus, Lata Mangeshkar not only had a large share in the pie, her share in the memorable songs was even larger. I described this phenomenon as flattening of the pyramid. Many readers gave two separate lists, but tried to give a combined list, too, by including 3 or 4 of Lata Mangeshkar and apportioning the rest among the ‘other’ singers.

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 1

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to?

Talat Mahmood-Mukesh-Rafi-Manna DeyThe year 1950 too shows, like 1951,  that male solos were far outnumbered by female solos (by about a factor of 4), both in the total songs and in my Select List which comprised about 15% of the total songs of the year. There have been many additions by the readers to the Select List. These are overwhelmingly female solos, and within that Lata Mangeshkar songs. If we include those songs the Select list would be about 200, and the female solo dominance over male solos would be even more pronounced. Such overwhelming asymmetry was a feature of film songs in general across all the years. We leave the reasons for such difference for another time; we limit ourselves in this post to intra-male solos’ analysis.

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Best songs of 1950: And the winners are?

Babul_Bawre Nain_Jogan_Arzoo_Sargam_NiralaAfter the year-wise review of the best songs of 1955 and 1953, I entered the era of pre-Filmfare Awards with 1951 last year. Continuing the year-wise review I come to 1950, i.e. the beginning of the glorious 50s. End of the 40s marked the end of an era of the vintage singers, and consolidation of the hold of Lata Mangeshkar. Now there was no doubt who the reigning queen of female playback singing was. The male playback domain did not show a similar one-star dominance. The two reigning monarchs of music, Naushad and C Ramchandra, who are incidentally being felicitated in tandem on SoY, dominated the year. The lesser stars too shone bright, with some landmark scores, matching the titans in brilliance. Enough to give music lovers hours of delight in contemplation and nostalgia. For the analytically-minded, the year gives enough material for intra-year and inter-year comparison.

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