Golden Age of Hindi Film Music...In Ten Episodes

I am going to finish off this series with two lovely songs from Rahul Dev Burman or RD Burman or RDB; the shining star of the seventies, the scion of the Burmans, inheritor of musical riches, the original Rock Star of Indian music...Call him all the names you like.  Pancham  - another of his names that stuck to him from childhood, apparently because he cried precisely in the fifth note (Pa) or because he wept in five notes -  was born with the proverbial silver spoon (and audava raga swarams, if you get my drift) in his mouth. That is often, reason  enough  to bog one down for a lifetime of entitlement and perpetual submediocrity. People born to overachieving parents either lack the talent or the drive to bear the weight of public expectations. Or both. (Cough...Abhi...cough..shek..cough...Bach...cough...chan). Pancham not only rose against the onerous gravity of being SD Burman's son but went a step further and established himself as the undisputed trendsetter of Indian film music

I will take one giant leap forward from 1962 to 1971. Charles Manson and his death cult, the so-called 'Manson family', were sentenced to death  by the courts - it was  later commuted to life in prison in 1972 - for what were called the Tate-LaBianca murders, one of the most gruesome serial killings in the US at that time.  I had recently watched a Netflix series called 'The Mindhunter', about a breakthrough effort, in the 70s,  by the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI that revolutionized the methods used by law enforcement agencies to profile criminals. The interviews with the serial killers like Charles Manson and Edmund Kemper that helped device these methods were  at once fascinating and deeply disturbing. Fascinating for the insights into the psychology of serial killers that it provided and disturbing for how brutal and psychotic these seemingly intelligent and, at least in Kemper's case, affable people could be. The other big event of 1971 was the India-Paki

I am going to make my next pit stop in the year 1962. It was a traumatic year for India. After electing Jawaharlal Nehru as Prime Minister for a third consecutive term (some would call that a traumatic event in itself), we got a nice whopping at the hands of our Chini bhais in the Indo-China War. Nehru never recovered from the deception from his favorite country, and passed away in the next couple of years, they say, an awfully sad man. Back to our song list, I had not intended for this series to shape up to be a Rafi-Lata love-fest but that's what it has become. They were the biggest talents of that era, no doubt, but I was expecting for Kishore, Mukesh, Asha, and even Manna Dey to be well represented in my list of favorites. But then, I had to be honest with myself and choose numbers that I best liked and those that best represented the era. All of this build-up is only  to exculpate myself for featuring Lata in the next two songs as well.  What can I say about Lata that has not

Let us step into the sixties.  Actually before we do that, one more thing. When I termed the years 1950 to 1975 as the Golden Age of Hindi Films, did the so-called "regional" industries from the rest of India share that sentiment about their respective filmdom as well? Meaning, were they going through their own version of the Golden Age? Perhaps. Just in terms of sheer numbers, the studios in Madras made more movies per year compared to Bombay. That is because the four South Indian industries were headquartered in Madras till the late eighties and in some years made over three hundred and fifty movies a year.  Kodambakkam was teeming with filmy talent. (Photo above:  Southern music directors   (Clockwise from top):  MB Sreenivasan,  Devarajan master, MS Viswanathan, Ghantasala, KV Mahadevan, GK Venkatesh,  S Rajeshwara Rao, G Ramanathan) Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy (the Shankar Jaikishan of the South), KV Mahadevan, Ghantasala,  GK Venkatesh (Ilaiyaraja's guru),  G Ramanath

I think this series has gotten way too intense. Time to lighten things up a bit. Seeing the rather morose settings and the long faces from previous songs, one may infer that the Bombay film industry did not possess a musical funny bone. That cannot be further from the truth. The stalwarts of the yore had enough musical sagacity to compose lighter numbers along the way, and keep the audience in raptures. And the audience of that era deserved every bit of rapture that one could give. Imagine India of that period, just around the time it became a republic and adopted the new constitution authored by Dr Ambedkar. The wounds from partition and Gandhi's assassination were still raw. Nehru and Patel were at the helm of a nascent, unstable democracy, whose survival was in doubt. The social indicators were pathetic. Literacy rate was eighteen percent, life expectancy was thirty-one years, and nearly half the country was below the poverty line. India seemed to be facing a perpetual grain sho

Raj Kapoor was a genius at enhancing the movie experience for his audiences. He regaled them with songs and sentiments, elaborate sets and costumes, and tramped about in his favorite Chaplinesque avatar. His scorching chemistry with the stylish Nargis only added to the effect,  further accentuated by the incredible camera work of Radhu Karmakar. Raj was the Ultimate Showman. For the world outside of India, he embodied Indian cinema like no one else has ever since - not even Satyajit Ray. Time magazine in its 'All Time Best Movies...' tribute called him, " India in all its vitality, humanity and poignancy". That was Raj Kapoor. There was another gentleman who was going to take that art of visually enrapturing the audience to a completely new level. The person’s name was Vasanth Kumar Shivashankar Padukone – popularly known as Guru Dutt. Guru Dutt was born to a Konkani family in current-day Karnataka but spent much of his early life in Kolkata.  He debuted as a direct