And the SOY Award for the Best Female Solo of 1939 goes to?

One can make a general observation about the female solos of 1939. Following the long-term ratio, the female solos outnumber the male solos by a good margin in this year too. But in the era of dominance of KL Saigal and Pankaj Mullick, they are still familiar and top of the recall. But female solos in the vintage era suffer in comparison – there was no Saigal or Pankaj Mullick among them. I have earlier observed that there was no Lata Mangeshkar before Lata Mangeshkar. Among the 50/52 MEMORABLE SONGS in the year included in my overview post, the number of female solos is about 23 against 16 by male singers.

The female singing in Vintage Era was full of rich variety, but today it sounds very dated, though I like it a lot. The problem of the Vintage Era female singing is that a larger percentage is unknown. After my Overview Post, and Wrap Up 1 about male solos, now it is time for Wrap Up 2 about female solos  

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And the SOY Award for the best male solo of 1956 goes to ?

The 1950s are an era of plenty. This was the period when all the greats of the Golden Era were going great guns, creating their best music. Having said that, Naushad, one of the greatest, was absent in the year, but others were active. We are moving in tandem with review of 1939 songs. While in this year nothing was known about the singers of 61% songs, in 1956 that kind of unknown is less than 6%. All the great male playback singers – Rafi, Mukesh, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Talat Mahmood and Kishore Kumar – were singing outstanding songs. Talat Mahmood is an interesting case. Among the great male playback singers, he faded the earliest. He shone like a meteor in the early 50s; and late 50s onwards, his best was over. In the year 1956, we find a number of his memorable duets, but his great solos are few and far between. Contrast this with his spectacular songs up to 1955. Mahendra Kapoor’s glorious period was yet to arrive.

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In the Vintage Era review of songs, we have reached the end of the 30s. In a stark reminder of our poor record of preserving our legacy, our Resident Scholar, N Venkataraman, gives a stark figure that only 4 Hindi films – Pukar, Aadmi, Dushman, Durga – are available in public domain for viewing. These are from famous production houses: Minerva; Prabhat; New Theatres and Bombay Talkies. Talking of Venkataraman ji, he is a great asset to SOY. In addition to songs, he was very prompt in correcting any inaccuracy in historical (general history) details.

It appears some good quality video links of songs beyond the above four films are available on the YouTube. In my Overview Post, I had given a broad statistics that of the total number of songs in which song titles are known in the year, in less than 40% of the songs singers are known. It is not surprising that so much of our music is just not available. That is no reason for the mental barrier some music lovers feel in accessing the Vintage Era music. But they all have a sense of discovering never heard before gems.

The comments veered over great deal of history of that period, sometimes with a generous dollop of opinions. Overall, a very satisfying discussion. I thank all the participants for their active participation.

Coming back to the Wrap Up 1 about Best Male Solos, this was the era of KL Saigal (Dushman) and Pankaj Mullick (Kapalkundala) and they did sing everlasting songs which are remembered till date. I find Jagmohan’s Mujhe na sapnon se bahlaao is also from this year. This has to be one of his earliest non-film songs, and it is among his most recognizable songs.  

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