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

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-...

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 tha...

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...

I don’t know if there is anyway to be objective about music. It is not like string theory or the tuning fork experiment that you can postulate things through a well-established procedure. Music is one of those disciplines where you are afforded the right to be openly prejudiced about your preferences, and allowed to get away with phrases such as “personal taste”, “can’t relate to that music”, et al, and shut out the counter-opinion without sounding chauvinistic or downright stupid. I am starting there because this series will have a bunch of opinions. Opinions that you will perhaps vehemently disagree with.  Opinions that will shake the very foundations of your thought process.  Opinions that will make you pose the existential question, Who Am I ? No, no. I am not going that far. Just know that my music tastes were largely conditioned by my family of delightful bigots. That includes my mom that bursts with South Indian pride quite inopportunely; my rabid SPB-S Janaki loving ...