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

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...

My Top Ten list does not start till the next chapter (sorry for the bait and switch). I wanted to kick off proceedings with a song  composed by legendary singer and composer Hemant Kumar Mukherjee, popularly known as Hemant Kumar.  I did that for two reasons. One, music lovers in India and across the world celebrated the centenary of this gifted musician, earlier this year. Two, much to my regret, my top 10 does not feature a Hemant Kumar number either as a singer or as a composer. One of my all-time favorite songs from ' Pyaasa' narrowly missed making this list. (Three, I wanted to keep my Bengali friends in good humor). Hemantda was a very prolific and accomplished singer: by the end of his career, he had recorded over two-thousands songs in various languages, notably in Bengali and Hindi, and won numerous awards, including two national awards and the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi award, for his seminal work on Rabindra Sangeet. He was no flash in the pan as a music dire...

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 ...