Carnival of Blogs on Golden Era of Hindi Film Music – June, 2016

Welcome to June 2016 edition of Carnival of Blogs on Golden Era of Hindi Film Music.

We begin with our regular Anniversaries section.

Songs of Yore completes six years is certainly quite an milestone to celebrate. True to the signature style of the blog, the post contains great, quite unheard of songs, For example:

• Jaage Mera Dil Soye Zamana – Baadshah (1954) -Aparesh Lahiri – Shankar-Jaikishan – Hasrat Jaipuri

Celebrating the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Part I: The Song is about THE song. A lot of people know about the origins of the poem, the Sufi poets, etc. What most people don’t seem to know about is the man who composed the music for this song – that is, the music that the famous Sufi poem has been sung to by thousands or millions of people over the last several decades. That man is the Pakistani film composer Master Ashiq Hussain. The film was Jabroo (1956) – Lal Meri Pat Rakhio.  Part II: The Festival presents a few good documentary clips and also am transcribing an interesting and amusing piece of writing from a favorite book.

We now take a look at posts on other subjects –

Shankar-Jaikishan’s female dance duets – The earlier post on Shankar-Jaikishan’s dance songs for Lata Mangeshkar has had generated a great deal of enthusiasm. Here is the follow-on one on female dance duets. We have picked up a few less-heard ones here:

• Are Koi Jaao Ri Piya Ko Bulaao Ri – Patrani (1956) – Lata Mangeshkar, Usha Mangeshkar and Meena Mangeshkar – Shailendra
• Bechain Dil Khoi Si Nazar – Yahudi (1958) – Lata Mangeshkar and Geeta Dutt – Shailendra
• Aha Legayi – Jwala (1970) – Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle – Shailendra

Romance of letters – Both Hollywood and Bollywood have letters as integral part of many films, but Bollywood goes one step ahead in having letter songs which may not necessarily carry the story forward, but so what, Indian audiences need their quota of dance and songs.

• Badi Badi Paati Likhwaiyan -Khidki (1948) – Shamshad Begum – C Ramchandra – PL Santoshi  

We also take opportunity to re-visit My Favourites: Letters in Verse

First films of some music directors – Arunabh Chowdhuri – is a very interesting collection of basic facts and related trivia, for example “What is even more odd is that Lata  Mangeshkar  sang  for  Khayyaam  before  she sang for Anil Biswas, SJ or Khemchand Prakash.  The HEER RANJHA song “Kaahe Ko Deenhi  Bides” is a traditional Avadhi song now credited to Ameer Khusro.  Lata sang it then, and Jagjit Kaur repeated it in UMRAAO JAAN – more than 30 years later!Life Lessons From Hindi Films –are lightly put across in a serious tone. As we go through the comments we see that Dusted Off also had two articles in a similar vein. The earlier one is Ten Great Bollywood Mysteries, and the second one (Why I love the comforts of old Hindi cinema) can be accessed through the link in this article: Why I love the comforts of old Hindi cinema

My Favourites: The Rain in Ten Moods – Three years ago, around this time, we have read a post on rain songs, which was followed by another.  After two posts on rain songs, we now have one on rain scenes. One of the comments on this article states that a scene from Ascenseur pour l’efachaud  does not have the rain but it’s there in the memory unless of course time has etched in something that wasn’t there. But Moreau and the camera and the music are amazing (and the rain later perhaps).

My Favourites: The ‘Mawsome is Awesome’ Songs surely have plenty of songs celebrating the generic ‘mausam’. Here are some of the less-heard ones:

• Mausam aaya hai rangeen  – Dholak (1951) – Satish Batra, Sulochana Kadam – Shyam Sunder – Aziz Kashmiri
• Mausam ye pukare  – Burma Road (1962) – Talat Mehmood, Lata Mangeshkar – Chitragupt – Majrooh Sultanpuri
• Ye hawa ye mastana mausam – Akeli Mat Jaiyo (1963) – Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi – Madan Mohan – Majrooh Sultanpuri

Ten of my favourite philosophical songs – focus on a philosophy of life. The philosophy shouldn’t be hidden away behind another agenda; the philosophy must be the main theme of the song. The discussion on the post has mentioned a very typical song. The songs filmed on comedians, invariably would include a dose of philosophy of life.

• Aey Dil Tu Na Darr  – Johny Walker (1957) – Mohammed Rafi  –  OP Nayyar

On a biography of Shashi Kapoor, householder and movie star – essay-cum-review for Open magazine of  Shashi Kapoor: The Householder, the Star – “In between all this, I was struck by Kapoor’s dignified turn as a modern-day Karna in Kalyug,… and dimly aware of his pencil-moustached “serious” roles in films like New Delhi Times and Vijeta. Though not one of my very favourite actors, he was always a pleasing personality, and even at a time when I was more interested in macho men and less so in sensitive, dreamy-eyed heroes like Shashi and his nephew Rishi, I think I realized there was something special about someone who could easily shift between the mainstream films I liked and the somber ones by Shyam Benegal and others.”

Manna from heaven is the melancholic, pining-for-the-past melody Coffee House er adda. The song penned by Gauriprasanna Majumdar recounts the Coffee House days of seven friends, who sat over endless cups and cheap charminar cigarettes burning between their lips with dreams to make it big.

Suraiya & Ashok Kumar in unreleased Wajid Ali Shah (1953)

 British director Herbert Marshall, making English version of  “Wajid Ali Shah”, puts Oudh’s last king (played by Ashok Kumar) in good humor.  Suraiya can be seen smiling in the background. The film was shelved later.

Famous Singers and their Signature Singing Styles – Anjana Mohan very succinctly reviews singing styles of Mohammed Rafi, Kishore Kumar, K J Yesudas, Begum Akhtar, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle

Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer, dies at 74

Muhammad Ali hands over a plaque to Mohammed Rafi in an undated picture from Yasmin Rafi’s collection

Suspense, Romance, Crime Thrillers, Offbeat, Social Drama: The Trend-setting Films of Raj Khosla By Peeyush Sharma

A rare picture of 21 years old Raj Khosla who made his debut as an actor in Raen Basera (1946). However, this film is not documented in his biography or elsewhere. (Pic: Pakanati Lakshmi Priya of Old Is Gold FB Group)

The post, as expected contains a large amount of facts, trvias and songs. For example – Khosla dug out an aborted Guru Dutt venture (Raaz) and made it into Woh Kaun Thi (1964). (Incidentally, the Tamil Nadu chief minister, Jayalalitha acted the part in both Tamil and Telugu remakes). We have picked up one song mentioned in the article –

Humse Bhi Kar Lo Kabhi Kabhi Meethi Meethi Do Baatein – Milap (1955) – Geeta Dutt – N Dutta (debut film of N Dutta as well) – Sahir Ludhyanvi

Re-claiming Indian Parallel Cinema –  Omar Ahmed

 

Rare poster of Sara Akash, one of the 3 films – the other two being Mani Kaul’s Uski Roti (1969) and Mrinal Sens’s Bhuwan Shome (1969) –  that ushered in the Indian New Wave cinema in 1969-70
(Pic: A Manzil of Memories: Rare memorabilia from Basu Chatterji’s films)

 

 

In Micro View of the Best Songs of 1949 @SoY, we have first taken up Male Solo Songs Till now, we have covered G M Durrani, Talat Mahmood, Surendra and ‘Other’ Male Playback Singers , Mukesh and Mohammad Rafi’s ever green solo songs, first and second part of  Other Noteworthy Solo songs

We end our present episode with posts/ articles that cover Mohammed Rafi, from a wide-ranging point of views –

We have picked up two of the rare and nice of the 10 songs of Mohammad Rafi that you are not heard of:

• Teri Aankhon Ka Rang Nirala Hai, Meri Aankhon Mein Tu Matwala Hai – Barood (1960) – with Lata Mangeshkar – Khayyam – Hasrat Jaipuri
• Meri Nigah Ne Kya Kaam Laajawab Kiya – Mohabbat Issko Kahate Hain (1965) – Khayyam – Majrooh Sultanpuri

A to Z of Mohd. Rafi Songs – Achal Rangaswamy has listed one song per an alphabet that encompasses every emotion, every mood and every kind of expression a singer could display

I look forward to receive your inputs for further enriching the contents of the posts…..