2016

Songs of Yore completes six years

Songs of Yore Sixth Anniversary June 7, 2016

Celebrating with some discovered gems and a tribute to Vidya Nath Seth I recall that on the fifth anniversary of SoY, Gaddeswarupji commented that many promising blogs start losing steam around the sixth year. The sixth year brought in some major constraints in my personal logistics. I had just taken up a new full-time assignment […]

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Shankar-Jaikishan’s female dance duets

Aji chale aao May 29, 2016

My post on Shankar-Jaikishan’s dance songs for Lata Mangeshkar generated a great deal of enthusiasm. I think the readers were with me that these songs are of exceptional quality and their orchestration and picturisation are very unique to SJ. KS Bhatiaji who has a great liking for SJ, matching mine for Naushad, suggested that their […]

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Moon and Mumbai (Bollywood)

Moon song May 20, 2016

Guest article by DP Rangan (After riding the high horse, Mr Rangan now explores the romance of moon.  I have earlier mentioned he is always bubbling with energy.   A seventy-plus going on seventeen, he is a great romantic – don’t be misled by his astronomical wanderings. This piece is another evidence of his zest for life.  Coincidentally, […]

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Forgotten Composers Unforgettable Melodies: Iqbal Qureshi

Iqbal Qureshi May 10, 2016

Anil Biswas, Naushad, C Ramchandra. Shankar-Jaikishan, SD Burman, OP Nayyar – the doyens of the Golden Era of film music. We know all about their music. We know all about them: their oppressive family, their supportive family; their happy marriage, their troubled marriage, their extra-marital affairs, their heartbreaks; their animosities, their break-ups and patch-ups; the […]

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Manna Dey’s songs by Shankar-Jaikishan

Shankar-Jaikishan with Manna Dey May 1, 2016

A tribute to Manna Dey (1 May 1919 – 24 October 2013) on his 97th birth anniversary Mumbaikar8 has rightly pointed out that Manna Dey has not yet got the importance on SoY he deserves. That in a way is also a reflection of his career. Recognised as an unparalleled singer of classical songs, he […]

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The Swar Kokila Kanan Devi

Kanan Devi April 22, 2016

A tribute to Kanan Devi (22 April 1916 to 17 July 1992) on her birth centenary The most important female pillar of the New Theatres, an enormously popular actor-singer of Bengali and Hindi films at the dawn of the film industry, having received the best actress awards a number of times, Padmashree, Gold Disc from […]

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Shamshad Begum’s songs by OP Nayyar

OP Nayyar and Shamshad Begum April 14, 2016

A tribute to Shamshad Begum (14 April 1919 – 23 April 2013) on her 97th birth anniversary When I did two back-to-back posts on Shamshad Begum’s songs by Naushad and C Ramchandra last year there was inevitably a reference to OP Nayyar as he is the third member of the trinity which made the greatest […]

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Best songs of 1949: And the winners are?

Best songs of 1949 April 3, 2016

In our journey in the Time Machine to yearwise review of the best songs of a year, we now enter what is the single most important year in the history of film music. The evolution of Hindi film music can be seen as gradual changes, shaken with major tectonic shifts once in a while. One […]

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Ode to the Great Indian Family

Thumbnail image for Ode to the Great Indian Family March 24, 2016

Wishing a very Happy Holi to everyone Holi was the time when one went to one’s ‘native’ place – everyone belonged to a place where he came from. In the olden days, going to the native place might involve using multimodal transport – by train to the nearest railhead, from there by bus, and the […]

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Best duets of the not-so-unloved Mahendra Kapoor

Mahendra Kapoor March 14, 2016

I had described Mahendra Kapoor as the most unloved singer in my last post on him. I have to modify that phrase, because the comments on that post indicate that he had more passionate fans and admirers than I had realised. Despite not counting myself among his passionate fans, I have a great liking for […]

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