The Master of Masters Khemchand Prakash

A good video clip of “Sapt suran teen gram” is on YouTube at https://youtu.be/tkHvTCqrtO4.

AK ji,

Thanks for writing on one of my favourite composers,Khemchand prakash ji. Hansraj behl,Ravi,Chitragupta and Khemchand prakash are the ones,whose compositions I find very melodious and except Ravi,the other three composers never got enough support of Luck during their career period. Hansraj and Chitragupta lacked the major banners for their work.

Another point is about Release of Mahal and death of KP.

Mahal was completed in 1949 and it was sent to censors. It got got the censor certificate No.14200Ft/U 44884 on 31-10-1949. That is why it is considered a 1949 film. However,for reasons not very well known or confirmed, the film was not released till one more year.
Finally Mahal was released on 13-10-1950 at Roxy Theatre in Bombay. Khemchand prakash died in seth Harkissondas Hospital,Bombay on the 10th of August 1950. His nurse and consort in the final days,Sridevi was the only person with him when he died. (after his death,Sridevi came on the road and was found begging near Haji ali dargah,by Naushad).
Point is, KP died 2 months and 3 days before Mahal was released and not just few days.
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Aa jaan-e-wafaa by Geeta Roy was composed by Basant Prakash, his brother.

Yes, the voice of Geeta Roy in this song is outstanding.

AKji,
Wonderful post on Khemchand Prakash, a great music director. So unfortunate that he died so young, by the way what was the illness due to which he died?
My two personal favourites of Khemchand Prakash are
Rajkumari song from Mahal-Haye Mera Dil http://hindigeetmala.net/song/ek_tir_chalaa_dil_pe.htm
&
KL Saigal Song from Bhanwara – Hum Apana Unhe Banana Sake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yg3Ci0gSm0

Nice AK, an interesting composer Khemchand Prakash.
As a child the arrangement of “Aayega aanewala” was what really drew my attention to the use of various instruments. I used to hear it on our old radio usually from the Purane filmon ke geet but the fidelity wasn’t good enough to separate out the instruments. But then my cousin gave me a cassette that had the whole song recorded very well albeit in mono when we got a good sound system. The start of the song with the initial piano strokes followed by the piano arpeggios accompanying Lata’s voice and then the entry of the strings along with the oboe is really lovely . The movement of the double bass and the piano when Lata sings “ya dil dhadak raha hai ” fascinated me. I used to rewind the tape again and again to hear that piece and the instrumental piece after the first time Lata sings “Aaye aane wala” and stops and the oboe dies out. You can hear clarinets and bassoon, bass, piano and strings play a lovely piece without any percussion before the song takes off.
The version I had on cassette also had a hawaiian guitar very clearly in the interlude before “bhatki hui jawaani” . I have not been able to find this version since my tape gave up its life.

By the way I’ve heard “Aa jaane wafa” often enough on Vividh Bharati in the 70’s and 80’s long before the music videos and the internet landed up. So I’m sure the song was issued on records and Mr.Kohri was mis-informed.

p.s. Basant Prakash had not composed ‘several songs’ for Anarkali. He had only composed Ae jaan-e-wafa when his untimely death left the producers without a music director. C Ramchandra stepped in, and the rest is history. Also, with all due respect, Lata had nothing to do with the request to remove the Geeta Dutt song from the film. C Ramchandra wanted all the songs to be sung by Lata; he requested that the Geeta song be deleted. While Filmistan (the producers) agreed, for reasons unknown, the Ae jaan-e-wafa was retained in the final print.

I like this song from Tansen very much.. Khursheed has sung this beautifully. I’m glad that Khemchand Prakash kept the pakhawaj for percussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tNT_qIV5UM

Coming back to “aayega aanewala” I wonder if it would be possible for somebody to locate the version with the prominent hawaiian guitar piece. I think this is the part which was played by Madhulika Liddle’s uncle and she has mentioned it.

Minai may be partly right. Two of the Vajifdar sisters worked in the production of Jan Pahchan. It seems that the three Vajifdar sisters had very wide background in dance and two of the three sisters studied in Almora for a while. One Jeroo Chavada son of one of the sisters commented about this in Richard’s blog. Possibly there were diverse influences on both dances, some coming from Uday Shankar school. https://roughinhere.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/outstanding-songs-from-mayur-pankh-1954/

Akji,
Your skill to distribute a song in a particular post is stunning ! The preplan When to release khursheed songs and when the others under KP, and a song should not be repeated in other posts, to pick the appropriate date, to select a specific song from a popular bundle(like you selected the song of rajkumari), this task consumes too much brain, and you do it just easily and perfectly ! Bravo !

I also like very much lata’s “Jadoo kar gaye kisike naina, ye man mora bas me nahi” from Ziddi.

Hans, thanks for that link. A curious case gets curiouser – why then did Basant Prakash leave Anarkali after composing only one song? Also, his son makes no note of his having composed for Anarkali at all.

Hans’ link has just raised more questions. I wonder if we will ever know how and why C Ramchandra took over as MD.

AK ji,

So much curiosity is generated about Basant Prakash’s exit from Anarkali.
Recently I read a book,in Marathi, “Cinemacha Cinema”by Isak Mujawar,a very senior and wellknown journalist and Film Historian of repute ( He died last month only).
There is a chapter on “Anarkali “films-from silent films to films till Mughal E Azam.
In this book,he says (rough translation from Marathi) ” Khemchand prakash’s brother Basant Prakash was the Music Director of Anarkali of Filmistan. He had recorded one song of Geeta Dutt. However, then there was some dispute with Shashdhar Mukherjee and him and C.Ramchandra was called in. Filmistan had allowed CR to decide whether he wants to remove or keep the Geeta Dutt song. CR decided to keep the song and ensured that due credit is given to Basant Prakash for that song.”

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AK ji,

I am surprised for 2 things.
1. How and who said that Basant prakash died in 1953 ? To my knowledge he was alive till the late 90s. In fact there is a separate page for Basant Prakash, in ‘Dhunon ki Yatra”by Pankaj Raag which lists all his movies and also mentions that he died in 1996. Then where from this info of 1953 came ?

2. Rituraj claiming to be ( he must be,of course.) the son of Basant Prakash and not having any correct information about father’s films or his date of death or his struggle in film industry….

Anyway, Basant Prakash’s first film as a MD was Jai Shankar-1951,along with brother Khemchand. It is not not known how many songs each one made,in that film.
In 1952 he did Saloni with Vinod, Shrimatiji with Jimmy and S.Mohinder, Nishan Danka and Badnaam. In 53 it was misfired Anarkali
In 57,it was Nilofur with Avinash Vyas, Maharani with J D Mujumdar and again Bhakta Dhruv with Avinash Vyas.
Hum kahan jaa rahe hain-66
Jyot jale-68
Ishwar Allah tero naam-82 ( not 84 as claimed by Rituraj) and
Abla in 1989 and not in 86 as claimed by Rituraj.
Basant prakash was born on 27-1-1928 at Shujangarh in Rajasthan and died on 16-3-1996 at Bombay due to Paralysis. He was 20 years younger than Khemchand and so he was taken in Adoption as a son by elder brother. There was absolutely no property of Khemchand,when he died. In fact his Hospital Bills remained unpaid.

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AKji (comment 32),
Probably you are right. Mahal songs have more variety, so may be they create more impact as compared to Tarana.

The other site
http://orkut.google.com/c1443029-t53ea04c1e7ffd259.html

@SSW The Anarkali LP was released in the USA on Capitol Records and this also omitted the Geeta Dutt song

SSW,
I do not know what songs are there on the LP, when was it released and with or without this song.
I was reading all that is thrown on the web and trying to make sense out of it.
When I read about Tushar Bhatia: to quote
“He was determined to bring out the lesser heard gems of Geeta ji.
Thus came songs like “Naa Main Dhan Chahoon” on The LP of Kala Bazar and Humko Chhod Ke Kahan Jaoge from Shrimati 420 on LP records for the first time. Only then people came to know that Geeta ji and Talat sahab has sung so many melodious songs together. And it re-emphasized the fact that Geeta Roy was the number one playback singer in Gujrati film music in the late forties and early fifties. All this was thanks to one of truly great fan of Geeta ji. Hats off to Mr. Tushar Bhatia ji who single handedly managed to do all this against all odds. Why, just for one cause, to let more and more people know about this great and talented singer named Geeta Dutt. He was also instrumental in releasing LP records of films like Baazi, Chhoo Mantar etc. which had many songs of Geeta ji,” unquote.
It made some sense to me, I thought may be this song might not have been on original LP and added later in 1984.

@SSW: At that time, both Gramophone Company of India and Capitol Records of the USA were owned by EMI Group of the UK. The decision to release Anarkali and other Indian LPs by Capitol Records in the USA was taken at the corporate level in the UK, and has nothing to do with your opinion of “when the sales were hardly likely to generate vast amounts of money”! Mr. Bhaskar Menon of EMI India, Calcutta, was transferred to EMI Capitol Records, Los Angeles to oversee the Indian record sales there. And I possess several EMI Capitol Records LPs featuring Indian artistes, which were all released in stereo versions.

A beautiful tribute to this great composer, certainly one of the doyens of Indian cine music.

While I do like “aayegaa aanewala”, I feel it has a rather limited repeat factor as it just.. too simple !! The orchestral arrangements of the song are definitely way ahead of their time but the tune itself is pretty ordinary. In contrast, “mushqil hai” and “ghabraa ke jo” are multi-layered and more intricate compositions. Just my personal view.

For all that, my personal vote for Khemchandji’s greatest song would be for this thrilling beauty from “Aasha” – “door jaaye re”. What a composition ! Truly out of this world experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H88d97HCUBo

No AK, I did not say the song was not released intially. I said I heard it often enough on the radio and so the internet was not necessary to make it famous.

Sathya I’m not sure that I entirely agree. If you look at the song in its entirety, the starting slow movement has notes that are not easy to hold. In the antaras the leap to the upper octave is not easy to achieve because Lata is still singing with her chest voice. She is not shouting or using her head voice.. The orchestration of course is excellent.

The other two songs that you mentioned are lovely. “Ghabrake” is more Indian in its use of gamakas and microtones. Even here the orchestration though minimal is quite intricate. You can hear the clarinet play along with the sarangi and sitar in the interludes and of course one cannot forget the tabla bols
There are interesting orchestral passages in “Mushkil hai bahot” too, some very nice obbligatos from clarinet, oboe, hawaiian guitar..

Apart from the side-trip on Basant Prakash’ Geet Dutt song in Anarkali, The main post and discussion has gone to make a fair justice to the Khemcahnd Prakash’s work.
He is one music director who can be studied futher by taking up his songs in greater depth as well.

I ma sure AKji will have several aces up his sleeve on this count. Look forward to each master trick !

AK
The post on Khemchand is very interesting from many, many points. I think Khemchand has intrinsic quality of making songs sweet and also their relations with the lyrics and dramatic aspects. Free praise for SSV for explaining the way song orchestrated with mentions of various instruments and their role in the architecture of the song; the song is breathtaking in the sound form and more interesting in the visual as it was shot in the film. In the history of SoY this stands at high rank in creativity. The film was extremely well directed by Kamaal Amrohi on his own story. The success of Mahal should go to all the actors and artists behind the scene trained by the Bombay Talkies. But this film did not save Bombay Talkies from its final dissolving, a fade out.
I have got some doubts about the other songs mentioned in the post. The film Sawan Aayaa Re is mentioned as 1945 film but in the Geet Kosh of Har Mandir Singh it is dated as 1949 and in the issues of 1949 of the Film India it was advertised as coming film. But the song “Main to gawan chali hun kahe bole papiha by Amirbai Karnataki from Sawan Aya Re (1945), lyrics Chaturvedi” certainly is very sweet. AK has put a question mark against Mohana. I think she is the same actress Mohana later on appeared as a comic actress in the films like “Naginaa 1951” and acted the comic song “ Humse Karo Pyaar”. Her last film could be Gemini Production “Insaniyat 1955” partnered with Agha in comic relief. In the film there is a monkey called Gippy. This was brought from Hollywood and when it arrived in Madras Mohana kissed it on the lips. The photograph got publicity in the news papers. After this film Mohana came to England and settled here. It is not known if she is still alive. But she certainly gave some good comic reliefs in the Indian films.
In the clip Kishore Shahu is shown as playing Piano. He did the same thing in his early film PunarMilan 1940 with his future wife Snehalata Pradhan. He acted the song Nachao Nacho in the voice of Arunkumar playing on the Piano.
So often Indian actors are shown playing piano with their fingers flat like as if they are playing on the Indian harmonium. Dilip K did the same in Andaz. Piano is played with the fingers bent on the knuckles. This is because the hammers of the keys need more energy as well as it is easier to move fingers from one key to other if the knuckles bent fingers. Perhaps SSV may want to add more in this area as this is his area.
I think Amir Karnataki could sing all kinds of songs without being shrill in high or low voices. Her “. Mora dheere se ghunghat hataye piya by Amirbai Karnataki from Bhartrihari” is in medium low voice, full of control and full of Singar Ras. And her voice in the song “Mari Katyar Mar Jaanaa” in “Shehania 1947 is such that magnificent Samashaad could learn from her. C. ramchandra started some new trend form this song.
There is some mention about C.Ramcahndra and Anarkali. I had opportunity to talk with him about it when he visited England and had some private concerts in late seventies and early eighties. About the Gita Dutt song, nodoubt it was a superb voice and probably later on O.P. developed it with many shades in his creativity with Gita nad later with Asha. C.Ramchandra told me he was a salaried employee in the Filmistan at the time and had no say in what songs should go and what songs should stay. He liked her voice and song. It is also very unlikely that Lata would have interfere in the affairs of the Filmistan or the recording companies at the time. She was becoming power but had no time to execute that kind of power which she might have got later on. She only was angry with her sister Asha as she married early and escaped from the responsibility of hr large family. She might have put some hindrances in the way of Asha. But she could not have done against Gita as she had her own field and she was in the singings before Lata got her break. It is the filmy market forces that ruined many good singers.
All the songs in Bhartruhari are sweet and to be listened again and again.
Shalan Lal

Interesting to read about the release of LPs like Chhoomantar, etc. There is a bit of story behind this happening (Arunji might correct me here if I am wrong). As everybody knows, HMV had the recording rights of more than 90% Hindi Film songs. HMV was in a bad shape financially by 1980s. In 1985, HMV was bought by RPG group,lock, stock & barrel, so they now had the recording rights. RPG made a thorough research about why HMV was making loss. The research clearly came out with the conclusion that there is a great demand for vintage songs from the period 1950-1970, but are not available. It is said that Lata Mangeshkar & Asha Bhosale both were on the HMV board & used to have a final say about which films songs were to be re-issued & due their bias very few old film songs were being re-issued of music directors like C Ramachandra, OP, Anil Biswas, etc. There is no way to determine how far this is true. The only source available for music buffs to buy old songs was “Chor Bazar” in Mumbai. So, if a music fan wanted to buy ,say, “Jo Mujhe Bhula Ke Chale Gaye” from Sangeeta, he had to search for it in “Chor Bazar” shops & pay whatever price the shop owner demanded. The price used to range from 50 rupees to 500 rupees depending upon the vintage value & demand. I myself have purchased a few OP “78 RPM” records for the price of 100 rupees each, in 1980-1982. There was no bargaining also, if you started bargaining the shop owner used to jack up the price. This I am talking about the period roughly from 1975 to 1985. To come to the point, RPG research correctly pointed to the great demand for the old songs. Fortunately, RPG were completely business minded, they did not care if the singers were Lata or Geeta or whether the Music Director was C Ramachandra, or Anil Biswas, or OP or Naushad. So, RPG decided to take action on this & started re-issuing old popular film songs & between the period of roughly, 1986 to 2000, they re-issued most of the old film titles. It was a great boon to people like me, I still have in my collection LPs/Cassettes purchased in that period, which includes, Howrabridge, 12 O’Clock, Hum Sub Chor Hain, Chhoomantar, Phagun, Ragini, Sone Ki Chidiyan, Baap Re Baap, Naya Andaz, Bahare Phir Bhi Aayengi, Yeh Raat Phir Na Aayengi, Mohhabat Zindagi Hai, Humsaya, Kismat, Kala Bazar, Baazi, Teen Deviyan, Nau Do Gyarah, Munimaji, Kala Pani, House No 44, Fantoosh, Taxi Driver, Ek Musafir Eh Hasina, Jaal, etc. By now, of course, most of the old film titles are available, though due to Internet it has lost its significance. To show how this benefited the old composers also, I remember that, in 1994, when we met OP on his birthday, he told us that he is now in a comfortable position financially (he had left his home in late 1989 & was not in a good shape financially), since he had received a long pending cheque of 9 lacs rupees from RPG as a royalty from the sale of his music for the period of 1990 to 1994. To conclude my long narration, yes I have in my possession Chhoomantar LP as well as Cassette.
PS: The 78 RPM was production was stopped after 1970, I have heard that, HMV dumped the old stock of 78 rpm records on the beaches of Mumbai & many people just lifted whatever they could get their hands on. Is this really true?

Mr.Kelkar thanks for the details. From what I have read it seems that the 78 rpm production started reducing from 1970 and was finally stopped around 1978.

I too purchased cassettes from HMV post 1986 (I got my first salary in 1986).

Ms. Lal that is an interesting observation about the piano playing technique. I must confess I had not noticed how the actors play the piano because I am not a great Hindi film buff. So I went off to see how DK played the piano in Andaaz and he did make a hash of it. The techniques are of course different because the instruments are different. With the harmonium volume etc is not controlled so much by the keying hand, it also depends on how you operate the bellows. It is a wind instrument. The piano is a percussion instrument and the volume is controlled by the attack of the fingers and the foot pedal. Plus the Indian use of the harmonium is usually melodic, western piano playing is inherently harmonic and chords have to be played with several fingers and movements from one chord to another is easier with bent rather than flat fingers.

It would seem that DK knew how to play the harmonium. He was very musical.

The flat finger technique seems to be also used by accordion players and possibly that is where the technique originated.

Shalan Lal ji,

Sindoor must be carrying CR’s name in the First edition of HFGK. The subsequent editions give the name of Khemchand prakash. I got HFGK in 2012. This edition carries KP’s name.

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AK, kudos and thanks for another enlightening write-up.

My suggestion: please think of doing a series of thematic all-time best songs, like the best (or most popular) romantic duets (my best, the Hum Dono opener), the best of Lata, and so on.

Another suggestion: a series of lesser lights, like Hansraj Bahl, C Arjun, and so on.

It would also be great to see a piece on the incomparable Sahir Ludhianwi (but not an extract of the Sahir book you recently recommended).

Might be somewhere above but I just noticed this son by Asha Bhosle in Sati Narmada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZilK5QGx6wU

Ms Shalan Lal ji,

This is an extract from one of my articles of 2013,about Mirza Musharraf-

” Thru Ramesh Advani(son of Bhudo Advani),I got a contact of Mirza musharraf’s daughter,who stays in Versova itself,where I too stay.I contacted them.her husband Muneer Khan,a production manager of Feroze khan earlier gave me some information on Mirza Musharraf Agha.

Mirza Musharraf was born in a sophisticated educated family.he was very fond of writing Lyrics.he came to Bombay to write film songs and was employed by General films.those days educated persons were eagerly employed by film studios.He first wrote Lyrics for A.R.Kardar’s film “Baghbaan”-1938 He got Rs.90 for the 9 songs that he wrote.During shootings kardar required an artist and Mirza was called to fill up the slot,as per the studio norms.Mirza had no dialogues,but he exhibited excellent use of facial expressions and comic timing.This actually killed his dream of becoming a lyrics writer,because after that he was made a comedian and got several films.As a comedian,mirza worked from 1938 to 1972,working in over 400 films.His last film was Roop tera Mastana-1972.
When he was on the peak of his career,a happy producer gave his Bungalow at Versova free to him for living.Though Versova was then quite far off and sparsely populated.Mirza lived there like a king.The marriages of both of his daughters took place there.Mr.Sanjeet Narwekar-the famous Film historian/journalist writes in his book, The story of Hindi Film comedy,about mirza ” His
speciality was interspersing his Hindi dialogues with English words-quite a curiosity in the pre-independence days.He was almost a permanent with V.M.Vyas and played cameo roles in a fairly long career.” According to Saadat Hasan Manto in his book,stars of another sky says-whichever film he acted he used to be the darling of the Heroes.He was particularly liked by Kardar,K.Asif and Rafiq Gaznavi.

In many films Mirza lip synched songs,but only in ONE film,he got few lines to sing himself.That was the film CAPTAIN KISHORE-1957.he sang along with Mohd.Rafi and Tun Tun.”

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Arunkumar Deshmukh, ksbhatiya, AK and others

You all are wonderful folks. So much interesting information Mr Deshmukh gives us that I do not know how to thank him enough. He is a jewel in the AK’s Blog of SoY.

ksbhatiya’s information about the Sikh names is amusing at the same time very informative. My Sikh friend once told me that these unisex names in the Sikh community was a deliberate effort post Guru Govind Sing’s campaign to give Sikh women equal status with men also political to confuse the Moghul persecution of the Sikh community.

I think Hindus too should follow the Sikh idea and give female equal status to women in names as well.

Shalan Lal

Hi AK

Thanks for your list of the unisex or reversal names. Names like Sitaram, Radheyshyam etc are often broken and used as the first part to address that person.

My sisters name Krishni and we have Vishni Lal are also common as to highlight the particular god in the family shrine. The nam Rami is also very known.

But there is nothing intriguing about “Shalan”. In my college days at the St. Xavier in Bombay we had five “Shalan” named girls at a time and a professor used to get confused and we would enjoy his confused state.

But the name “Mukesh” for a girl is unusual but then we had a girl called Raji in our building. Raj Kapoor was called Raji by his family and friends.

Well, I think “a name of any rose” should smell sweet if we take the things as they are.

Shalan Lal

AK’ji , Ms Shalan Lal ,

When I was young and saw Awara , I too was fascinated by its Dream sequence; specially its music , dance , camera movement and cinematography . Its an RK’s stamp that he experimented with a very tough screenplay conveying the theme of the movie at a single place in the form of a dream . And what a beautiful result he got . As I grew and as I repeatedly saw the RK’s movies ; I got more interested in his films and use to discuss each and every scene with my brothers and friends .

It’s a fact that RK made cohesion of three songs and seamlessly picturised them as a single dream song .

1 tere bina aag yeh chandni…….. by Lata and chorus [ mostly female]

2 yeh nahi yeh nahi hai zindgi……by Mann dey and chorus [ mostly male ]

3 ghar aya mera pardesi……………..by Lata and chorus[ male and female ending with RK ‘s voice ]

This song and dream sequence was one of the highlighter of the movie besides the main theme song … Awara hoon . RK carried on with seamless songs in subsequent movies also . In Boot Polish the Three in One song was …..Raat gayee jab din aata hai . The song has three splits

1 raat gayee jab din aata hai ……. by Mannadey and chorus

2 John chacha tum kitne aachey….by Asha’ji and chorus

3 Badtaa chal badtaa chal tu ek hai …. by Mannadey and chorus

The picturisation of the song , acting and song itself was a another highlighter of the movie and feather in RK’s cap .

RK studio continued this trend to some extent in Shree420 as well . One can recall …. Mud mud ke na dekh song that again comprised of :

1 Mud mud ke na dekh ……..by Asha’ji and chorus

2 mud mud ke na dekh ………by Mannadey and chorus
After these two seamless songs there is a pause of confontration between Raj kapoor and Nargis after which the third song appears

3 O jaane wale mud ke jara dekhte jaana jara dekhte jaana….. by Lata’ji [ no chorus , only soft instrumental violin orchestrisation with touches of mandolen and guitar against the waltz and fast rhythm of the asha / mannadey song .]

There after RK continued with such songs in Bobby also… Pyar mein saauda nahin and Jhooth bole kauwa kaate…..are the example . later on this trend got lost in time .

With these musically rich movies RK became a sort of cultural ambassador and became a world wide personality . Bollywood got their name and fame in Hollywood as well . Beside ‘Chicago’ indian culture can easily be seen in ‘ Moulin roughe’ also .

AK and ksbhatia

Thanks for your agreeing to do the post on Awara. Let us celebrate the great thespian who did great things for India, Indian films and motion pictures in general.

Shalan Lal

I googled like crazy to try to know what killed khemchand Prakash so young….now I know. Another artist who died very young was raja mehdi ali Khan..any idea what was the reason of his death

The geeta dutt number in anarkali was composed by Basant prakash