Pankaj Mullick

Best songs of 1940: Wrap Up 1

And the Award for the Best Male Singer goes to?

1940 was a year of churning in the film world. It came at the transition of the first decade of spoken films, 1930s, and the beginning of the 1940s. It was a churning of musical styles when one kind of music making was coming to an end, and another was showing its sprouts. There was also a churning in established studios like the Bombay Talkies – because of the death of its owner Himanshu Rai; and the New Theatres of Kolkata, which was struck by a fire destroying most of their prints. However, these tragedies did not deter them from creating some great films and outstanding music. I have written about the general scenario in my Overview Post of the best songs in 1940.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

Multiple Version Songs (16): Rabindra Sangeet and Pankaj Mullick

Hridaya Pankaje Rabi Viraje

A tribute to Gurudev Rabindranath Thakur (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) and Pankaj Mullick (10 May 1905 – 19 February 1978) by guest author N Venkataraman

(The appeal of Rabindranath Thakur’s poetry and songs of love, nature and worship transcends the boundaries of language and culture. Pankaj Mullick, one of the titans of music and films, has a historical place in bringing Rabindra Sangeet mass popularity through his singing, and using it in films for the first time. I was looking for a knowledgeable Bengali to write on Rabindra Sangeet-Pankaj Mullick-films songs, as a part of the series on Multiple Version Songs. SoY readers are familiar with Venkataramanji’s breadth and depth of knowledge, and he is as pucca a Bengali as anyone could be. I am grateful that he accepted my request to write this double tribute to the two great souls of India on the occasion of Gurudev’s 153rd and Pankaj Mullick’s 109th birth anniversaries. – AK)

Rabindrnath Tagore-Pankaj MullickSometime during May last year, AKji had wished to bring out two articles, under the Multiple-Version-Songs series. The first one, on ‘SD Burman’s Bengali songs and their Hindi versions’, was done by AKji in October 2013. The post on ‘Rabindra Sangeet tunes used in Hindi films’ was generously offered to me, but with a rider – I must accommodate a tribute to Pankaj Mullick, whose birthday follows a couple of days after Gurudev’s. The topic, Rabindra Sangeet tunes used in Hindi films, has been covered earlier on some other sites, and I believe most of our knowledgeable readers and our Bengali friends must be aware of these songs and related facts. But that did not prove to be a deterrent. On the contrary, it gave me an opportunity to explore uncharted areas and approach the subject a bit differently. The experience was not futile. Although I could use only a fraction of my acquisition in this post, it helped me to enhance my knowledge and listen to many wonderful songs.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

My favourite Pankaj Mullick songs

A tribute on his birthday May 10

Pankaj Mullick I became seriously acquainted with Pankaj Mullick several years after I had thoroughly absorbed KL Saigal. This would probably be the normal sequence for any non-Bengalee what with Saigal having acquired an iconic status, and generations of listeners having grown on a Saigal song every morning at 7.57 AM which would be the last song on Radio Ceylon’s programme Bhoole Bisre Geet.

The trigger point was an evening dinner gathering of friends when Chakko (short for Chakravarty, that was his name) sang Ye raatein ye mausam ye hansnaa hansaanaa. The impact on me was mesmerizing. Chakko was by no means a professional singer, it was one of those gatherings where everyone sings, some being a little better than others. Soon after I came across an LP of his songs, which not surprisingly had this song at the top. Coming to the internet age I heard many more of his songs, both films and non-films, in Hindi and Bengalee, and became more aware of the vast world of beautiful gems of Pankaj Mullick beyond Piya milan ko jana (which seemed to be the only song played in the radio days).

READ THE FULL ARTICLE