Best songs of year

Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 4

And the Award for the Best Music Director of 1945 goes to? And wishing everyone Merry Christmas

Shyam Sundar-Bulo C Rani-Anil Biswas-R C BoralComing to the final Wrap Up 4, i.e the Best Music Director of 1945 is akin to the end of a Season of a web-series. For those who have not been with SOY since the beginning of the series, a refresher of how it all started will be in order. Long back then-active readers AM and KR Vaishampayan suggested that I do a yearwise survey of the music of pre-Filmfare Awards years 1953-45, in reverse order, and place it for in-depth analysis, comments and suggestions by the readers. AM and KRV have gone off the radar since, but off and on I get mails from KRV about his welfare and that he has been busy in his personal matters.

Filmfare Awards selection calendar was not coterminous with the calendar year in which the films were made, because the cut-off date for nomination was before the end of the year and due to other administrative procedures. For example, the first Filmfare Award for the Best Music was given to Naushad in 1954 for Baiju Bawara (1952). Two movies made in 1954 – Taxi Driver (S D Burman) and Nagin (Hemant Kumar) – got the Awards for the Best Music Director in 1955 and 1956 respectively. Thus, there are gaps in 1955 and 1953, hence you see these years covered in my yearwise reviews.

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Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 3

And the Award for the Best Duet goes to?

Best films of 1945_Tadbir-Kurukshetra-Village Girl-Zeenat-Badi Ma-Pahli NazarWe have seen in some years that either male solos or female solos may be tepid, but duets never disappoint. That has to do with combinatorics. If there are, say, 3 prominent male singers and 4 female singers in a year, there are 12 possible voice combinations. Even if the music directors use half of them, you get six interesting combinations of singers for duets. This adds extra colour. It also makes some difference whether the male or the female singer takes the lead. Another dimension is added if it is a male-male or a female-female duet, or it becomes a triad or multiple-singer song which I have been treating as a duet.

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Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 2

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

Noorjehan-Amirbai KarnatakiWhen Noorjehan visited India in 1982 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Indian talkie movies, one of the songs she chose to sing was Baithi hun teri yaad ka lekar ke sahara from Village Girl (1945), composed by Shyam Sundar, to a deafening applause. She was the dominant female playback singer of the year, having memorable songs from Badi Ma, Village Girl and Zeenat. Her first superhit Hindi film was Khandan (1942), followed by some more successful films in which she was the lead actor-singer, such as Naadan (1943), Dost and Lal Haveli (1944). Thus by 1945 she was among the leading actor-singers of the era.

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Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 1

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

Mukesh-KL SaigalMy Overview post of the best songs of the year 1945 had a Master List of 59/60 Memorable Songs (one song had a female solo and a female-female duet version), the least in the year-wise reviews so far. This was expected not only because of the relative antiquity as we go further back chronologically, but also because the year saw the lowest number of films produced during the period 1941-49. This has resulted in significantly less songs than the other years reviewed earlier.

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Best songs of 1945: And the winners are?

Tadbir-Kurukshetra-Village Girl-Zeenat-Badi Ma-Pahli Nazar-1945Now we come to the end of the year-wise review going backwards. It was progressively going into more unknown territory. Out of approximately 670 songs from 74 films in 1945, nothing is known about the singers of about 300 songs, i.e 45% of the total. However, a striking feature of this year is the significantly lower number of films produced, and consequently number of songs, compared to the preceding and succeeding years.

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Best songs of 1946: Final Wrap Up 4

And the SoY Award for the Best Music Director goes to?

Wishing Merry Christmas to the readers and a tribute to Naushad on his Birth Centenary (25 December 1919 – 5 May 2006)

Naushad-Ghulam Haider-Hansraj BahalI need not have put a question mark about the best music director of 1946. Rarely one comes across such a single-horse race. This was the year of Naushad all the way. The SoY regulars would recall from my reviews of 1947, 1948 and 1949 (I am doing the review in the reverse chronological order) that he continued his dominance in these years too, being chosen the best music director in 1947 jointly with C Ramchandra, and unambiguously in 1948 and 1949. He did one better in 1946, by making the competition in all categories – male solos, female solos and duets – a Naushad race.

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 3

And the SoY award for the best duet goes to?

Aawaz de kahan haiIn the year-wise reviews of the best songs, as we entered pre-1949, we gradually encountered less and less familiar songs. It became quite pronounced in 1946, in which I could include only 81 MEMORABLE songs in my Overview post, which is far less than the number in the later years, in absolute as well as relative terms. The level of unknown can be gauged from the fact that out of 1270 known song-titles, nothing is known about the singers of about 740 songs, i.e. 58% of all the songs. Of the remaining 534 songs whose singers are credited, here is a chart giving break-up of male solos, female solos and duets. This chart was also included in the Wrap Up 2 relating to the best female solos of 1946.

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 2

And the SoY Award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to?

Noorjehan-Amirbai Karnataki-Shamshad Begum-SuraiyaAs the readers would recall from Wrap Up 1, the Award for the Best Male Solo turned out to be a one-horse race, thanks to KL Saigal’s superlative songs in the film Shahjahan, composed equally superbly by the Great Mughal Naushad. Lata Mangeshkar acquired that status 1949 onwards, when in most of the years you would have to create two categories: One, she by herself, and the other, ‘Other Singers’. She did have some songs in the year in minor acting roles, but these went unnoticed. Today we know about them because of the Internet, but in the earlier era these songs would have been known only to the collectors and researchers. Lata Mangeshkar out of the reckoning in 1946, is there any other female singer sprinting far ahead of the pack?

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 1

And the SoY Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to?

KL Saigal-Durrani-Surendra-Rafi-Mukesh-1946Now we come to category-wise discussion of the best songs, following from my overview post on the Best songs of 1946. Understandably, the total number of MEMORABLE SONGS mentioned in the post (81) was the lowest so far in the series on year-wise reviews. Since we are going back year to year, this is a function of entering into less and less familiar territory. The male solos in the list were 22 in number, divided among the following singers:

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Best songs of 1946: And the winners are?

Anmol Ghadi-Shahjehan-Safar-Eight DaysAs I started traversing back from the 1950s to the 40s in the year-wise review of film songs, I mentioned that we are entering the era of more unknown than the known. This is best exemplified by the year 1946: Out of 153 films in the year, nothing is known about five films, whether its actors, song titles, what to speak if its singers etc. It is a huge number of films in a year, overtaken only in a few years in the entire history of talkie films starting from 1931. Of the over 1270 known song-titles, nothing is known about singers of about 740 songs, i.e. about 58% of all the songs. My list of MEMORABLE SONGS in any year has been generally well over 100, but in the year 1946, I could not stretch it beyond 78/81 (one song has a male solo and female solo versions, and two songs have a male solo and a male-female duet versions). Even in this list many songs would appear to be unfamiliar and unheard. That makes the exercise of the year-wise review more challenging as well as interesting.

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