Best songs of year

Best songs of 1940

And the winners are?

This is the transition year between the 1930s and 1940s. This was the year when Himanshu Rai, the founder of Bombay Talkies, passed away. The internecine war in the studio had not yet begun. So Bombay Talkies was going great guns with Ashok Kumar and Leela Chitnis with films like Aazad, Bandhan with music by Saraswati Devi and Ramchandra Pal. Ramchandra Pal working solo also gave outstanding music for Punarmilan with a great twin song Naacho nacho pyare man ke mor (by Arun Kumar/Snehprabha Pradhan). I don’t know whether it was the first twin song of Hindi films, but I can say without hesitation and disproving my general hypothesis, that both the versions are equally good.

Disaster also struck New Theatres too, which had a huge fire destroying most of their prints. But that didn’t deter them from making some great films with outstanding music: Zindagi with lead actor-singer KL Saigal, and Nartaki with lead actor-singer Pankaj Mullick, both scores composed by Pankaj Mullick, and Haar Jeet, composed by RC Boral. READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1941: Wrap Up 3

And the SOY Award for the best duet of 1941 goes to?

I have mentioned the special charm of duets for the variety they add to the film music. In the Vintage Era it is more pronounced as we come across many gems by singers whose names we have not heard.

The long term average of number of songs gives a pattern – the number of duets is more than male solos but far short of female solos. As we run down the list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the overview post, we can see 21 duets. Sharp observers can see the total of the three categories does not add up. This deviation by 1 or 2 is because of errors in classification – some songs classified as solos should be classified as duets as we discover another distinct voice. Needless to say our analysis is not complete if we don’t include the duets – many of them are absolutely superlative though some singers are completely unknown.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1941: Wrap Up 2

And the SOY Award for the Best Female Singer goes to?

As the readers are aware from the year-wise reviews, the female solos on the average far outnumber the male solos. In the Overview Post of the best songs of 1941, I had included 71 songs. In the Wrap Up 1  about the best male solos in the year I mentioned there were 17 male solos distributed among 7 singers in the list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the overview post. If you run down the same list you would find 35 female solos divided among 19 singers as follows:READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1941: Wrap Up 1

And the SOY Award for the Best Male Singer goes to?

In KL Saigal’s active years, the Best Male Singer was generally a one-horse race. He has sung great songs in 1941, too, in the film Lagan. Yet he is not a runaway winner. Nay, I would say with Doctor (1941) in which Pankaj Mullick appears as an actor-singer and the music director, he came up with a score of a lifetime. With six immortal solos from this film which I have included in the Overview Post, Pankaj Mullick is by far the front-runner in 1941.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1941

And the winners are

The regulars of SOY who have been following year-wise reviews of the best songs of the year would have noticed an interesting feature. Every vintage year was characterised by some film(s) whose music became timeless. If we had Rattan in 1944 by Naushad, we had Kismet and Tansen in 1943, and Basant and Bhakt Surdas in 1942. 1941 too is no exception. If KL Saigal is there in a year, you can expect some everlasting songs. But besides Lagan (1941), Doctor helmed by the actor-singer Pankaj Mullick from New Theatres turned out to be an artistic and musical masterpiece. It is remarkable that New Theatres achieved that with a social message.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1942: Wrap UP 4

And the SOY Award for the Best Music Director of 1942 goes to?

After the Overview Post, Wrap Up 1 of the best male solos, Wrap Up 2 of the best female solos and Wrap Up 3 of the best duets, it is time for the final Wrap Up 4 to discuss the best music director 0f 1942. There were at least two musical blockbusters in the year: Bhakt Surdas (composed by Gyan Dutt) and Basant (Pt. Pannalal Ghosh/Anil Biswas). The reason I am crediting like this is that Pt. Pannalal Ghosh is officially credited as the music director, but it is said that Anil Biswas was the actual music director, who could not use his name because of contractual reasons; Pt. Pannalal Ghosh only gave background score. This trivia has been mentioned so many times at different fora that I would henceforth use only Anil Biswas as the music director of Basant. There are some more films in the year in which Anil Biswas was the music director without any confusion.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1942: Wrap Up 3

And the award for the best duet of 1942 goes to?

1935 to 1946 have been years of KL Saigal dominance of the film music. Yet, there is something about duets that even in these years duets leave a lasting imprint. These include some duets in which KL Saigal is the male singer, but the female counterparts hold their fort. I have no hesitation in saying say that Jis jogi ka jog liya ho and Sar pe kadamb ki chhaiyaan muraliya baaj rahi have been embellished by the presence of Khursheed and Rajkumari respectively.

In the list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the Overview Post, there are 20 duets in 84/85 songs. I find that I have counted 23 male solos in Wrap Up 1 and 34 female solos in Wrap Up 2. If you total these, it leaves a gap of 7/8 songs. This is because in some songs either one or both the singers are unidentified.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1942: Wrap Up 2

And the SOY ward for the Best Female Singer goes to?

In my overview post of the best songs of 1942, I had mentioned that the ratio between male solos and female solos in the songs in which singers were credited was 1:2.55 in the year as a whole. I had included 84 songs in my list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the year. The Wrap Up 1 of the best male solos listed all the 23 male solos that were in the list of MEMORABLE SONGS. These were divided among 15 singers, but KL Saigal naturally dominated the list. During his years of dominance the male singing was mostly a one-horse race.

How does female solos compare with this picture? In the list of MEMORABLE SONGS I had included 34 female solos divided among 17 singers as follows:READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1942: Wrap Up 1

And the award for the Best Male Singer goes to?

KL Saigal in most of his active years was a colossus and, thus, the answer to this rhetorical question was a foregone conclusion. In 1942, Saigal had just one film, Bhakt Surdas, but that was enough to make his songs etched in the memories of music lovers forever. To be sure, there were many other male singers as well, such as KC Dey, Surendra, GM Durrani, Khan Mastana, Rafiq Ghaznavi etc. Out of a total of 84/85 songs in my list of MEMORABLE SONGS in the overview post, there are 23 male solos, distributed among 15 singers as in the table below.READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Best songs of 1942

And the winners are? As we go back more and more into vintage years there is a concern whether we would come across some familiar songs. There are indeed some undiscovered gems, but there are also many songs which have become immortal and have been part of us since the radio era. KL Saigal wasREAD THE FULL ARTICLE