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

Hemant Kumar

Book Review: “The Unforgettable Music of HEMANT KUMAR”

March 31, 2022

The Unforgettable Music of HEMANT KUMAR By Manek Premchand Pages: 441 First Edition: 2020 Blue Pencil, New Delhi (With study of his Bengali repertoire by Antara Nanda Mondal and Sounak Gupta) Salil Chowdhury once said if God wanted to sing, he would do it in the voice of Hemant Kumar. Lata Mangeshkar said about him, […]

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Dattaram Part 2: Breaking out of the Banyan Tree with ‘Other’ Singers

May 29, 2021

Second and final part of tribute to Dattaram (1929 – 8 June 2007) We saw in Dattaram Part 1 dealing with his songs for Mukesh and Manna Dey, how his association with the Big Banyan tree, Shankar-Jaikishan, made it difficult to get out of the comfort zone of SJ. The readers Mahesh and Hans Jakhar […]

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Hemant Kumar’s Non-film Songs

December 4, 2020

Concluding the series of centenary tributes to Hemant Kumar (16 June 1920-26 September 1989) with his non-film songs My introduction to the last post by Ashok M Vaishnav on Hemant Kumar’s solo songs under the baton of other music directors conveyed that that rounded off his centenary celebrations. But it rankled me that his centenary […]

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Hemant Kumar’s solo songs under ‘other’ batons

November 25, 2020

Guest article by Ashok M Vaishnav in the series of Centenary Celebrations of Hemant Kumar (16 June 1920-26 September 1989) (SOY has launched a befitting Centenary Celebration of the much loved music and film personality Hemant Kumar, starting with N Venkataraman’s foundational article Hemantayan Part 1 on his Birth Centenary, 16 June 2020, which covered […]

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Hemantayan – Part 2

September 26, 2020

A tribute to Hemant Kumar on his 31st Remembrance Day (16 June 1920 – 26 September 1989) in his Birth Centenary year by guest author N Venkataraman (N Venkataraman launched the Centenary Celebration of Hemant Kumar with his superb article Hemantayan Part 1 on his Birth Centenary, 16 June 2020. This gave a comprehensive overview […]

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Hemantayan – Part 1

June 16, 2020

A tribute to Hemant Kumar on his Birth Centenary (16 June 1920 – 26 September 1989) by guest author N Venkataraman (Lata Mangeshkar once said in an interview about Hemant Kumar, “Listening to Hemant Da, I feel as though a sadhu sitting in a temple is singing a bhajan.” But a more endearing observation was […]

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Ravi’s many-splendoured genius with the ‘other’ singers

December 15, 2019

We now come to the end of the series on Ravi. In my opening post in the series we saw him as a many-splendoured genius with a large number of songs for themes and occasions, which have acquired an iconic status, many of which made the readers exclaim, Oh, this is also composed by him! […]

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SD Burman: ‘The Courage of His Convictions’ (Has his way on Hemant Kumar)

October 8, 2019

Guest article by Moti Lalwani as a tribute to SD Burman (1 October 1906 – 31 October 1975) ‘Ye raat ye chandni phir kahaan’ by Hemant Kumar, lyricist Sahir Ludhiyanavi, composed by SD Burman (When I wrote a review of HQ Chowdhury’s book ‘Incomparable Sachin Dev Burman’ sometime back, I had mentioned that an acknowledged […]

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Hemant Kumar’s duets with ‘other’ singers

Hemant Kumar, Asha Bhosle and Geeta Dutt

June 16, 2019

A tribute to Hemant Kumar on his 99th birth anniversary (16 June 1920 – 26 September 1989) I had written on the best duets of Hemant Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar in my first year of blogging. Then I had said: “Hemant Kumar in his voice brought the beauty of Bengal and melody of Rabindra Sangeet. […]

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Hemant Kumar’s songs by SD Burman

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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