A tribute on Shamshad Begum’s first death anniversary April 23
As the ethnic stereotypes go, no two people can be further apart from each other than a Bengali and a Punjabi. SD Burman and Shamshad Begum were the leading lights of the two extremes – East Bengal and the West Punjab, yet when they combined they created a unique magic. When Shamshad Begum had a revival through remixes, the song that led the pack was Saiyna dil mein ana re, composed by SD Burman. Shamshad Begum’s leading composers were Naushad, C Ramchandra, OP Nayyar and Ghulam Mohammad, and in the earlier era, Ghulam Haider. Anyone else would not have even dared to try to enter this illustrious field, but the versatile genius that he was, SD Burman created his own niche with her, adapting his music to completely suit her style.
Generally I would not have given much thought to their combination as it appears quite counter-intuitive to me. But when I closed my series on SD Burman last year, Mr Venkataraman treated it as the last of ‘that year’, and suggested that I cover his other prominent singers, namely Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, Talat Mahmood and Hemant Kumar this year. As I looked up more closely I came across many more of her songs than we are generally aware of. Here is an overview of their combination, continuing my tribute to SD Burman, as well as a tribute to the great singer Shamshad Begum on her first death anniversary (April 23).
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This year started with Naushad, who was followed by C Ramchandra. We have since seen their close duel with Amirbai Karnataki. Consequently, some readers were surprised not to see a similar comparison in my last post on Shamshad Begum’s songs by Naushad on her 96th birth anniversary. Indeed there is a comparison, but their work with her is so important and large that fitting them in one post would not have done full justice. So here is Shamshad with Naushad’s formidable rival, C Ramchandra, for the readers to judge the match.
