A tribute to old Hindi film music. Songs of the 30s through the 60s.

Miscellaneous

Swing a song of sixpence

January 1, 2019

Swing into the New Year with guest article by Ashwin Bhandarkar (A promise made is a debt unpaid. When Ashwin Bhandarkar wrote his first guest article on 6 May 2017, titled Beena madhur madhur kachhu bol, I had indicated he would be writing more articles for SoY. Here he makes good his promise, and I […]

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The Faint Echoes of the October Revolution: A Centenary of the Capricious Philosophy in the Socio-political life!

October 24, 2018

Guest article by Shalan Lal (No event in history has caused as much impact on the world of politics and ideas as the Russian Revolution of October 1917. And no revolution has strayed as much from its path, turning into a totalitarian regime and causing untold miseries on its people. The political edifice collapsed under […]

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‘Forgotten Artists of Early Cinema and The Same Name Confusion’

August 18, 2018

Welcoming the ‘writer’ Arunkumar Deshmukh and his first book ‘Forgotten Artists of Early Cinema and The Same Name Confusion’ By Arunkumar Deshmukh & Prof Surjit Singh Published by Professor Toofaanii Publishers I want some information about Master Vitthal and Zubeida, the lead actors of the first talkie, ‘Alam Ara’, for writing my dissertation for my […]

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Songs of Yore completes eight years

June 7, 2018

On the eighth anniversary of Songs of Yore, I am going to break an unwritten code I have tried to follow – keeping private and public apart. I have met SoY regulars in the NCR from time to time, and also those living in other places during my travels to the cities where I knew […]

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The path, the traveller, the journey and the destination

May 12, 2018

We are told that to succeed in life we have to have a goal, and we have to take the right path to reach there. But how do we get to the right path? You reach a fork in life, you choose a path and that makes all the difference. Had you chosen the other […]

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Songs of stars

April 28, 2018

For the SoY regulars, the title of this post may come as a surprise, because DP Rangan has already written an exhaustive post on songs on stars. That was about stars in the sky (i.e. तारे/सितारे). However, there are another kind of stars around whom the film world revolves. They have names like you and […]

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Songs that tell a story

April 17, 2018

Songs have been an integral part of our films right from the very first talkie Alam Ara (1931). The common understanding is that music had been an integral part of our folk, classical and theatre traditions, and it was a natural extension to films. Our early films were largely based on our existing theatre forms. […]

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Tasveer exhibits of Bollywood

March 22, 2018

Guest article by DP Rangan (A lesser mortal, when asked to write on songs on ‘tasveer’, would have made some general observations about pictures, and mentioned some songs which contained the word ‘tasveer’. Not DP Rangan, as we know well by now. Mr Rangan takes us to pre-historic days when mankind would have started making […]

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Parody songs: Part 2

March 12, 2018

(I thank Ashok M Vaishnav for very generously sharing his compilation of parody songs with me – AK) In Part 1 of this post I covered the parody songs based on a single song. This seems to have later led to the practice of parodying the mukhada or a short portion of a number of […]

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Parody songs: Part 1

March 2, 2018

Wishing the readers a very Happy Holi (I have been compiling parody songs for a while, when I got a mail from Ashok M Vaishnav that he has also been doing such a list, and whether he could write a guest article for SoY on this. No one does compilation and analysis better than him, […]

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