2020

Nayika Bhed in songs

Abhisarika Nayika March 8, 2020

Commemorating International Women’s Day (March 8) and wishing everyone a very Happy Holi The erudite readers of the SoY will be surprised to see a post on Nayika Bhed on the International Women’s Day (March 8), which commemorates the movement for women’s rights relating to equality etc. If you  look at Nayika Bhed from the […]

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‘The stormy petrel of the Indian screen’: Shanta Apte

Shanta Apte February 24, 2020

A tribute to Shanta Apte on her 56th Remembrance Day (b. 23 November 1916/1918 – d. 24 February 1964) I became aware of Shanta Apte quite late compared to her contemporary Kanan Devi about whom I was quite familiar from my very young radio listening days. Today I know that Shanta Apte was to Pune/Bombay […]

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Film Songs Based on Classical Ragas (13) – An afternoon with ragas: Bhimpalasi and her Sisters

Bhimpalasi February 15, 2020

Guest article by Subodh Agrawal (Subodh Agrawal, a well-known name with SoY regulars for his series on film songs based on classical ragas, is resuming his series after a break of about three years. This was primarily due to logistic issues he faced regarding proper Internet connection and computer. But as he has shown before, […]

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Film Songs From Firmament

Atmospheric songs February 5, 2020

Guest article by DP Rangan (DP Rangan is by far the most prolific guest writer on SoY, and among its most senior members. If he is appearing after a long gap, I am partly responsible for it as a couple of his articles have been in my folder for a while. I had already scheduled […]

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‘Vandya Vande Mataram’: The story of a Song Perennial

Vande Mataram January 26, 2020

Guest article by N Venkataraman to celebrate 70th Anniversary of the Republic (During our days of innocence we learnt in the school that ‘Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He’ was our ‘National Anthem’ and ‘Vande Mataram’  was our ‘National Song’, both of  equal reverence, and we sung both with equal fervour on special occasions. When […]

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Surrogate Songs

Le ke pahla pahla pyar January 13, 2020

Music and dance became an integral part of our films right from the first talkies, as our sources for initial films were Parsi Theatre, or Marathi Natya Sangeet which had music galore, or Mythologicals in which apsaras entertained in the Devlok. These gradually evolved into usual romantic stories, with a third angle thrown in at […]

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Romancing the Route 66

Route 66 wall mural Pontiac January 1, 2020

Wishing the readers a very Happy New Year with some nostalgia about Americana I became aware of the name ‘Route 66’ after I started blogging, but my dream of driving cross-country through small-town America goes back about three decades when I was a graduate student at Yale. As a country boy landed in the big […]

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