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

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

Prithviraj Kapoor, the progenitor of the Kapoor khandaan, was a pioneering film actor and a passionate dramatist. He had this habit of being associated to greatness, like Forrest Gump. 'Alam Ara' the first Indian talkie, 'Awara' the movie that set the entire Eastern Bloc on fire, and 'Mughal-e-Azam', K. Asif's obsession and arguably the biggest Indian movie ever made (yeah, bigger than 'Bahubali', factoring for inflation), all had Prithviraj Kapoor playing pivotal roles. It was his passion for acting that brought the Kapoors from Peshawar to Bombay, and enabled them to eventually acquire the mantle of the First Family of tinsel town. But Prithviraj's actual calling was elsewhere. He was a sucker for theater. To a point where he literally bankrolled his fervor for it with his movie earnings. In 1944, he founded Prithvi Theater, a hundred-plus-strong, traveling troupe that went all around the country and staged Hindi plays. Over time, they complete

I picked the timeframe 1950 – 1975 for a reason. For one, the extremities were nice, round multiples of five. But then there are real reasons. Throughout this series, I will be name-dropping abundantly and almost all of stalwarts either made their debut or made it big in 1950 and the thereabouts. This was no mere coincidence. So, what happened in 1950 that actuated that change? Don't get me wrong. The Hindi film industry was like Ranganathan Street even in the forties. It was a bustling, vibrant place. In fact, Bombay made more movies per year between 1945 – 49 than between 1950 – 1960. So, it was not like the sleepy forties suddenly woke up and started manufacturing talent out of thin air. But 1950 symbolized a generational shift in the musical talent of the Hindi industry. The music composers that ruled the nineteen forties  were names like Bulo Rani, C. Ramachandra, Husnlal Bhagatram, Khemchandra Prakash (who can forget 'Aayega aanewala'?), and Chitragupta. Stalwarts, no

The songs that I will feature in this series are in chronological order, except for the first one. I will start with the year 1959. Nehru was still the premier of India. His rose-tinted 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' vision would continue on for another three years, till it received a severe jolt with the Chinese invasion. The Dalai Lama had fled to India and Fidel Castro was anointed the Prime Minister of Cuba early that year. Nepal's women voted for the very first time in election, while Swiss women were denied suffrage in a referendum vote (they would finally get the right to vote in 1971). The first song in the series is from the movie, 'Dil Deke Dekho' starring Shammi Kapoor and Asha Parekh (her debut), with Nasir Husain helming the direction department - it was just his second movie. There is the eponymously titled number sung by Rafi that is perhaps more famous than the one I am going to play. I have a reason why I featured this song first.  In the quarter century t