Best songs of 1953: Final Wrap Up 4

The Songs of Yore Award for the Best Music Director goes to?

Shankar Jaikishan_C Ramchandra_Anil Biswas_Salil Chaudhary_Ghulam MohammadCanasya asked in one of the posts in this series, what was the avowed objective of these posts? Jignesh mentioned that SoY Awards have surpassed the fame of Filmfare Awards (I like that Smile).  Filmfare is indeed a reference point, because this series started last year on some readers’ suggestions that I do a year-wise review of the best songs of pre-Filmfare years. The somewhat presumptuous title and style of writing is all for enjoyment. But music is a serious thing, and the discussions have become deeply involved, the comments both in quantity and quality have increased significantly compared to the last year. So to answer Canasya’s question – some like-minded people, most of whom know each other only in the cyberspace and who are deeply passionate about music, are together embarking on this wonderful voyage of reminiscing about and rediscovering old film music. The survey article together with Wrap Up 1 on the best male playback singer, Wrap Up 2 on the best female playback singer and Wrap Up 3 on the best duets and the present final Wrap Up together represent probably the most unique and comprehensive discussion of the entire music of a particular year. The Final Wrap Up is based on the previous posts and the readers’ comments, naturally, and seeks to focus on the best music director(s) of the year.

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Best songs of 1953: And the winners are?

1953 filmsSoY regulars would recall that last year I wrote a string of posts on the best songs of 1955. The idea came from the readers’ suggestion to do a yearwise review of the best songs of pre-Filmfare Award years. Even though Baiju Bawra (1952) became the first film to win the award for the  best music, it transpired that in later years, no film of 1953 or 1955 won the Filmfare award, whereas two films of 1954 – Taxi Driver and Nagin – won the award in the years 1955 and 1956 respectively. Without getting into the reasons for this discrepancy, I decided to make the record straight and covered the year 1955. From this logic, this year I am reviewing the songs of 1953 (I am proceeding in the reverse order as suggested by the readers). Thereafter, it would be the turn of 1951, after which the sequence would become regular.

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Best songs of 1955: And the winners are!

1955 films

I am delighted to present a survey of the best songs of 1955 and invite the readers to an interactive discussion to choose the best songs, singers and music director. For this post I have to thank the readers AM and KR Vaishampayan who suggested while discussing the music of Mughal-e-Azam (which failed to win the Filmfare award for 1960 films!) that I do a year wise survey of music of films of 1953-45 in reverse order and place it for in-depth analysis, comments and suggestions by the readers. They suggested 1953 as the year because the first Filmfare awards were given in 1954.

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Suman Kalyanpur outshines Lata Mangeshkar

Haal-e-dil unko sunana tha sunaya na gaya

suman_kalyanpur Suman Kalyanur had to remain in the shadows of Lata Mangeshkar because of her uncanny similarity to Lata’s voice. Many of her songs are indistinguishable from Lata’s style, either because she was subconsciously imitating her style or the music directors were viewing her essentially as Lata’s replacement. Yet there are several songs which bear her special imprint. There is one particular song in which she seems to have clearly overshadowed Lata. I am referring to Haal-e-dil unko sunana tha sunaya na gaya from the film Fariyad (1964).

The beautiful lyric by Kedar Sharma is worth reproducing in full:

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