Remembering Durga, Sangeet Mahakumbh at Patna and Pandit Kumar Gandharva
There are great romantic lovers like Dev Anand renowned for their ways with women. And there are illiterate, bumbling ones no less endearing like Raj Kapoor with Padmini in Jis Desh Mein Ganga Bahti Hai – so has been my romance with Raga Durga for over 35 years.
{ 65 comments }
The SoY award for the best duet goes to?
Now this series is about to come to an end. My first first wrap up on the best male solos had a similar question mark as there was indeed a tough choice between all the top singers Mohamad Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. In the second wrap-up on the best female solos, the surprise was gone because it was a choice between Lata Mangeshkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Lata Mangeshkar….That would be the situation most of the 1950’s and 60’s. For the duet, the great diversity comes back. Rarely there would be another year with so many great duets in the voices of all the great singers. Most of the duets have become a landmark in our film music history. For a comprehensive list you may refer to the mother post on the Best songs of 1955. Here I am selecting the best ten duets, which are not in the order of preference.
{ 19 comments }
SoY award for the best female playback singer goes to Lata, Lata, Lata, Lata….Mangeshkar
(It is a while since I wrote the survey article on the Best songs of 1955 and its first wrap up on the Best male playback singer of 1955. Then a number of interesting themes came up, and completing this string of posts somehow went out of sight. By the time I remembered, it was coming quite close to Lata Mangeshkar’s birth anniversary. Therefore, I am coinciding it with her anniversary as my greetings to her. I realise this is not a satisfactory way of handling this series. Hopefully from the next year onwards I should be able to complete a particular year’s posts in continuity. – AK)
When I wrote the first wrap up on the best male playback singers of 1955, I posed it with a question mark, and as we saw, there was indeed a tough choice between all the six great male playback singers – Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar. The scenario changes completely in the case of female playback singers. Not only in 1955, but most of the 50’s and 60’s you could pick up ten top songs and they might all be Lata Mangeshkar’s. Never had any playback singer dominated more than this, nor anyone has done so since. Therefore, my using a similar question mark to maintain the form would be like a recent award function anchored by Shahrukh Khan. This was when Vidya Balan was wining all the awards for Dirty Picture. After the customary ‘And the award for the best actor (female) goes to..’, the envelope containing her name was announced. When she jumped with excitement, Shahrukh Khan snapped at her, ‘Vidya, you should stop acting, you know that you are going to get the award.’
{ 75 comments }
When I wrote on the songs of nadi and naav sometime back, I thought one kind of journey was complete (with Harvey’s majhi). But I had missed a crucial element as I realised from Ashok Vaishnavji’s comments. The boat has to reach its shore, and the journey is not complete till you have reached kinare.
{ 61 comments }
In my last post on Mukesh and his ‘dil’ songs, there was a song, Ae jaan-e-jigar dil mein samane aa ja. Urdu poetry gives the same status to jigar as to dil as a metaphor for something very vital and very dear. There are also other examples of ‘dil’ and ‘jigar’ being used together and interchangeably, such as Tumse achha kaun hai, dil-o-jigar lo jaan lo or a later one Dard-e-dil dard-e-jigar dil mein jagaya aapne. If long back Rafi sang Ek dil ke tukde hazar hue koi yahan gira koi wahan gira, a maverick politician, Mahamaya Prasad Singh came as tsunami in the mid-60’s in Bihar, riding the wave of student unrest and describing them as his Jigar ke tukde. His opening words in his public meetings, Mere jigar ke tukde, generated a hysteria Indian electoral politics had not seen before. That his short-lived rein unleashed student lawlessness and collapse of Bihar’s education system is another story. (An idea for Mr. Ashok Vaishnav’s blog – ‘Role of emotive slogans in politics: Quit India, Jigar Ke Tukde, Gharibi Hatao, Bhrashtachar Mitao, Down with Zionists’?)
{ 87 comments }
A tribute on his death anniversary August 27
Everyone is born with a heart, but that does not make everyone a romantic. There was something special about Mukesh and ‘dil’, not only his romantic heart but his romancing the heart.
Mukesh started his journey with ‘dil’. As a young lad, while singing at his sister’s wedding in Delhi, he was noticed by his relative Motilal, who had become a well known personality in the film world by then. Motilal brought him to Bombay where he got a break in Nirdosh (1941), with Dil hi bujha hua ho to fasle bahar kya. The next song which caused a sensation and made Mukesh, the Mukesh was Dil jalta hai to jalne de. Further, you let your mind wander the Mukesh landscape and what do you get? Kabhi dil dil se takrata to hoga, Toote na dil toote na, Hum aaj kahin dil kho baithe, Teri duniya mein dil lagta nahi, Mere toote hue dil se koi to aaj ye poochhe… You go on and on and you get dil songs of incredible beauty. No one did it better that Mukesh, and it is no wonder he won the hearts of millions with his sweet and melodious voice.
{ 91 comments }
Guest article by Subodh Agrawal
(Rains bring in romance in the air with their musical sound of raindrops, greenery and chirping of a variety of species which were, as if, only waiting for the monsoon. Pankaj Mullick sang in his famous ‘Ye raatein ye mausam’ thus – Ki do garm saanson ka ek saath ana/ Ye badli ka chalnaa ye boondon ki runjhun/ Ye masti ke aalam mein khoye se hum tum/ Tumhara, tumhara mere saath ye gungunana/ Mujhe, mujhe bhool jana/ Inhe na bhulana, bhulana, bhulana. But if manbhavan is away in saawan, the rains give pain as Kishori Amonkar sings ‘Barkha bairi bhayo’. Subodh explores in this post a group of four ragas – Chhayanat, Gaud Sarang, Gaud Malhar and Kamod – which characterise romance, in his by now familiar elegant style – AK)
Moonsoon has arrived after a long wait and brought with it – the season of romance immortalised in countless works of literature as well as folk, film and classical music. After toying with the idea of doing a post on Malhar and its variants I have opted to go for a group of four ragas: Chhayanat, Gaud Sarang, Gaud Malhar and Kamod, that are ideal for creating a romantic mood. There is a lot that is common between these ragas and it is easy to confuse between them – particularly for film songs as they usually don’t stay within the narrow confines of a particular raga. They also overlap with some other ragas like Hameer, Kedar, Bilawal and Bihag. My suggestion is to enjoy what is common between them without worrying too much about the finer distinctions.
{ 45 comments }
Double tribute to two geniuses
Who composed the best songs for Mohammad Rafi cannot be conclusively answered. But there is no doubt that Roshan would figure in the top four or five for this honour. That is significant considering that Roshan did not have the advantage of a big banner nor big stars like Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor or Rajendra Kumar. Moreover, interestingly, Rafi seems to be a very late entrant in Roshan’s work. After creating waves with Mukesh in 1950 (Bawre Nain) and Talat Mahmood in 1952 (Anhonee), he had long association with them, and regardless of how his films fared, he gave songs for them which are undisputed landmarks. In contrast, with Rafi he had some insignificant songs from time to time, till he hit big time with him in 1960 with Babar and Barsat Ki Raat. A decade’s lag means his songs for Rafi would be far outnumbered by Naushad, Shankar Jaikishan, OP Naiyar, SD Burman, Ravi and Chitragupta. Later entrants Laxmikant Pyarelal, of course outnumbered every one, and naturally Roshan too by a huge margin. Yet the fact that some of the most memorable Rafi songs are composed by Roshan is a testimony to the latter’s enormous talent.
{ 40 comments }
When I was writing my last post on the Songs of River, I remembered Harvey had done some time back majhi (boatman) songs. Naav or naiya is the link between the two. As a matter of fact there cannot be a majhi without a naav, whereas a naav can by itself be propelled by the flow of water or breeze. When Kunti placed the baby Karna, born before wedlock, in a basket and set him afloat in a river, it was carried to Adhirath and Radha, who brought him up as their son, condemning him for lifetime to be known as a Sootputra. A baby does not need a boat; basket is good enough, which is actually a baby naav.
{ 65 comments }
In an interesting coincidence when this site carried Subodh’s article on music from the mountains, Harvey was doing songs of clouds. Mountains and clouds share a very intimate relationship. Their union gives rise to rivers. With this pedigree, it is no wonder some of the most beautiful songs are based on river, though no Raga is named after her, unlike her parents who have Raga Pahadi and Megh after them (or is there a Raga Nadi, Subodh?).
{ 63 comments }
