Suraiya

Suraiya: The Last Nightingale of Bollywood

Guest article by DP Rangan

(Suraiya was literally as sweet as a nightingale. I have covered her in some detail. But with his amazing enthusiasm for research, DP Rangan was not deterred in finding enough interesting material and uncovered songs on her. I thank Mr Rangan for this nice article and join him in paying my tribute to one of my greatest favourite singers on her 89th birth anniversary (15 June 1929 – 31 January 2004). – AK)

SuraiyaThis is the seventh in the series of posts on this chanteuse, a rage among her admirers in late 1940s. The earlier six posts were all creations of the blog master. Four of the posts were on her combination with the music directors Naushad, S D Burman, Anil Biswas and Husnlal-Bhagatram. The fifth one was general in character based on her songs of the later part of her career, i.e. 1950s through 60s, and the sixth was a small writeup focused on a song Door papiha bola. Naushad, Husanlal Bhagatram and Ghulam Mohammad were music directors in bulk of her films and it will be difficult to exclude Naushad in any discussion of her songs. I have tried as far as possible not to repeat any of the songs from the earlier posts. Such are her achievements, blogs can be written on several aspects of her personality ad infinitum. I have tried to trace her biography and illustrated with songs not so well known as is my usual practice.

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The first duo Husnlal-Bhagatram (1): Their songs for Suraiya, Lata Mangeshkar and Rafi

Husnlal-BhagatramI have signed off the series on Shankar-Jaikishan recently. Before that I had done series on Anil Biswas, Naushad, C Ramchandra and SD Burman. As the readers now expect the next famous music directors in line, there are some yesteryears stalwarts who shone like meteor for a short while, or who gave great music consistently over a long period, but who were not lucky to get sustained commercial success. Though not counted among the G-5 or G-7, they are very dear to the lovers of songs of yore. I was always conscious while doing the series on the superstars that I have to take care that we don’t miss the lesser, but no less talented stars. Husnlal-Bhagatram occupy a very important place in the history of film music as a bridge between the vintage and the golden era, between the theatre-style singing of Zohra Ambalewali, Zeenat Begum and Amirbai Karnataki, and the smooth, melodious singing of Suraiya and Lata Mangeshkar, between GM Durrani and Rafi.

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Naushad’s “The Singing Girl Next Door”: Suraiya

A tribute on her 86th birth anniversary (15 June 1929 – 31 January 2004)

Naushad and SuraiyaOur last singing star, Suraiya, attained incredible heights of popularity bordering on mass hysteria. She started her singing career, as a child artiste, with Naushad; subsequently, she sang playback for Mehtab in a few films; she graduated as an actor-singer and reached superstardom on the strength of the songs he composed for her. Out of her 300 odd songs, Naushad accounts for about 50. Husnlal Bhagatram might have done a few songs more; he, too, occupies a very important place in her career. But considering Naushad’s association from her debut to her grooming to her maturity, he is the single most important factor in creating the Suraiya legend. For all the superb Suraiya melodies we love, she was an untrained singer, with a limited range. The skilful master, Naushad, kept her in her basic range, and created a feeling in the minds of the viewer that The Girl Next Door was singing.

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Suraiya’s songs by SD Burman

A tribute on her 85th birth anniversary, June 15

SD Burman and SuraiyaSD Burman getting into Navketan camp and Suraiya’s intense romance with Dev Anand meant that there would be a number of songs of this singer (and actor)-composer pair. Since SD Burman made his debut late, his songs for Suraiya are much less compared to, say, Naushad’s, but as was his wont, he had a talent to create something for every singer, which would easily rank among his/her landmark songs. We have seen this even with Mukesh, who was a peripheral singer in terms of quantity, but his every SD Burman song is memorable. With her love affair with Dev Anand encountering insurmountable obstacles from her family, Suraiya left the film world early (barring some sporadic appearances till the early 60s) and chose to live her life as a recluse, with her inner pain. This meant that Suraiya-SD Burman combo would be necessarily not very prolific. But even if we just count Man more hua matwala and Nain deewane, Suraiya’s songs by SD Burman have a place among her greatest songs.

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Door Papiha Bola: Suraiya by Anil Biswas

A tribute to Anil Biswas in his centenary year and to Suraiya on her 10th death anniversary

Anil Biswas and SuraiyaFor many years after getting deeply attached to the vintage songs, I regarded Anil Biswas as peripheral to the music career of Suraiya. When I thought of Suraiya, the composers who came to mind most prominently were Naushad, Husnlal Bhagatram and Ghulam Mohammad. Much later, I heard Door papiha bola in a most unlikely situation. This created an impact I had not felt before. Songs of Yore was not on the anvil then, and my browsing the net was also sporadic. Therefore, locating the co-ordinates of the song by chance gave me an indescribable joy, and I started looking at Anil Biswas’s songs for Suraiya in a different light. Door papiha bola represents to me the very essence of every music lover’s relationship with music – a distant call of the papiha in the night, which you wish went on forever, but soon the night is half gone when your tryst has just begun. When I started this blog, effectively its first post was titled Door Papiha Bola.

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Suraiya: The Last Singing Star

A tribute on her death anniversary January 31

SuraiyaAside from Lata Mangeshkar Suraiya is among my top favourite female singers. She debuted as a child artiste in 1942 (film Sharda). Within three years she rose to become one of the top singing stars acting opposite the greatest legend KL Saigal in 3 films. Within the next three years her beauty, singing and romantic pairing with Dev Anand both on-screen and off-screen became a national craze.

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Door Papiha Bola

Your relationship with songs that moved you, that brought tears to your eyes the first time you heard them and every time you hear them, is deeply personal.  How can others relate to your experience?  And no matter how well you write it would be less than what you felt.

Nida Fazli famously said:

Yun to har ghazal mukammal hoti hai
Par kalam se kaghaz par utarti hai to kuch kami rah jati hai.

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