2014

Hemant Kumar’s songs by SD Burman

SD Burman and Hemant Kumar September 17, 2014

Hemant Kumar, a singer-composer par excellence, and SD Burman, a Titan among singer-composers. And the former was quite open to singing for other composers too. That brought the two great Bengalis together. Hemant Kumar was another name for melody and sweetness – he is among those who never sang anything which was less than extremely […]

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Best Songs of 1951: Wrap Up 2

Amirbai Karnataki, Rajkumari, Zeenat Begum, Shamshad Begum, Geeta Dutt, Sandhya Mukherjee September 6, 2014

Songs of Yore Award for the Best ‘Other’ Female Playback Singer goes to? In the previous two series for 1953 and 1955, I had one Wrap Up for the best female playback singer, and unlike the question mark for male singers, the by-line for female singer had a straightforward: “And the Award goes to Lata, […]

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Made for each other: Mukesh and Kalyanji-Anandji

Mukesh and Kalyanji-Anandji August 27, 2014

A tribute to Mukesh on his death anniversary August 27, and a tribute to the music duo In the surfeit of TV programmes associated with Centenary Celebrations of Indian Cinema last year, I closely followed the ones on film music. There was one presented by a young lady on Kalyanji-Anandji. After a quick reference to […]

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Aao bachcho tumhein dikhayen jhanki….ki

Pakistani film Bedari (1957), a frame by frame remake of Jagriti (1954) August 15, 2014

Independence Day greetings to India and Pakistan Fill in the blank in ‘Aao bachcho tumhein dikhayen jhanki…ki’. We all know the answer – ‘Hindustan’. If you think of it, ‘Pakistan’ also fits in perfectly. It is quite befitting that this is so, because no two countries have such shared history, shared culture, language, musical tradition, […]

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Multiple Version Songs (18): Hindi-Telugu exchange

Hnadbill of 'Bhakta Prahlad' (1931 - Telugu) August 8, 2014

Guest article by Arunkumar Deshmukh (The Living Encyclopaedia, Arunji, needs no introduction to the readers of SoY or other music related blogs.  His first guest article in the series on Multiple Version Songs was on Hindi-Marathi, naturally.  When I was struggling to look for someone to write on Hindi-Kannada, Arunji surprised me by doing the […]

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Rafi’s duets by SD Burman

SD Burman and Rafi July 31, 2014

A tribute to Rafi on his death anniversary, July 31 If you revisit my earlier post on Rafi’s songs (solos) composed by SD Burman, along with the readers’ comments, you realise the high regard in which the music lovers hold their combination. In spite of his known fondness for Kishore Kumar, SD Burman had something […]

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The Maker of Mukesh: Anil Biswas

Anil Biswas and Mukesh July 22, 2014

Continuing Anil Biswas Centenary Year celebration, a tribute to his most famous protégé, Mukesh, on his birth anniversary, July 22 And the rest is history. A worn-out cliché, but nothing describes Anil Biswas’s role in the emergence of Mukesh better. Mukesh was a struggling singer-actor in the period 1941-1945, when his brother-in-law, Motilal, took him […]

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Remembering Anil Biswas, The Singer

Anil Biswas July 7, 2014

A tribute on Anil Biswas’s Birth Centenary (b. 7 July 1914; d. 31 May 2003) Songs of Yore heralded 2014 as the Year of Anil Biswas with Inaugural post by his daughter, Shikha Biswas Vohra – Anil Biswas: The Maestro and My Father. We have since had three more posts dedicated to him with his […]

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Best songs of 1951: Wrap Up 1

Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, CH Atma, GM Durrani and Kishore Kumar June 26, 2014

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? As the readers of SoY are by now aware, the survey article on the best songs of a year is followed by category-wise Wrap Ups. I start with the first Wrap Up on the Best Male Playback Singer of the year. The series […]

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Suraiya’s songs by SD Burman

SD Burman and Suraiya June 15, 2014

A tribute on her 85th birth anniversary, June 15 SD Burman getting into Navketan camp and Suraiya’s intense romance with Dev Anand meant that there would be a number of songs of this singer (and actor)-composer pair. Since SD Burman made his debut late, his songs for Suraiya are much less compared to, say, Naushad’s, […]

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