Singers

Rafi’s best songs by Ravi

Ravi and Rafi July 31, 2019

A tribute to Rafi on his 39th death anniversary (24 December 1924 – 31 July 1980) Rafi being undoubtedly the most versatile playback singer of the Golden Era, he sang a number of great songs for many music directors. For most composers, he was their leading singer. Who gave the greatest songs for Rafi? I […]

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 1

KL Saigal-GM Durrani-Surendra-Rafi-Mukesh June 26, 2019

And the SoY Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? Now we come to category-wise discussion of the best songs, following from my overview post on the Best songs of 1946. Understandably, the total number of MEMORABLE SONGS mentioned in the post (81) was the lowest so far in the series on year-wise […]

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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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The real mesmeriser Talat Mahmood: His best non-film songs

Talat Mahmood February 24, 2019

A tribute to Talat Mahmood on his 95th birth anniversary (24 February 1924 – 9 May 1998) Never before could a reader foretell what I would write on nine months in advance. But like anything in old film music, nothing can be said in absolute terms about SoY. In May last year, a new reader […]

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Rafi’s best duets by Madan Mohan

Madan Mohan and Rafi December 14, 2018

The best songs of Rafi for any music director would include a number of duets. So it is for Madan Mohan, despite the fact that his solos for Rafi are significantly more than the duets. That is an exception to the general trend of duets being far more in number than male solos. Since we […]

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In the Musical Memory of Meena Kapoor

Meena Kapoor November 23, 2018

Guest article by Shalan Lal as a tribute to Meena Kapoor (c. 1930 – 23 November 2017) on her first death anniversary (Meena Kapoor has not been acknowledged enough on SoY. Mumbaikar8 has drawn pointed attention to this omission, and was sore that I credited the songs of ‘Anokha Pyar’ (1948) like ‘Yaad rakhan chaand […]

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Roshan’s songs for ‘other’ singers

Roshan November 16, 2018

A tribute to Roshan on his 51st death anniversary (14 July 1917-16 November 1967) DP Rangan started a tandem series on Madan Mohan-Roshan on July 14 which, in a unique coincidence, happened to be the birth anniversary of one, and the death anniversary of the other. I have since written a number of posts on […]

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Rafi’s duets by Roshan

Roshan and Rafi November 5, 2018

My post on Rafi’s solos by Roshan appeared more than six years ago, several years before I started the series on the stalwart music directors. And the reason was simple: Roshan ranked among the top in my reckoning for Rafi songs, along with Naushad, SD Burman and OP Nayyar. Duets have no less importance in […]

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Madan Mohan’s tuning with Lata Mangeshkar

Madan Mohn and Lata Mangeshkar September 28, 2018

Wishing Lata Mangeshkar a very happy 89th birthday (b. 28 September 1929) Among all the music director-singer combinations Madan Mohan-Lata Mangeshkar ranks among the very top. This article by Anirudh Bhattacharjee and Srijit Mukherji quotes OP Nayyar as having once said, “It is difficult to figure out whether Madan Mohan was made for Lata Mangeshkar […]

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King of Ghazal Talat Mahmood with Ghazal Maestros Madan Mohan and Roshan

Roshan, Madan Mohan and Talat Mahmood September 18, 2018

DP Rangan set-off a tandem series on Roshan-Madan Mohan with their classical-based songs. I have since written on their songs for Rafi (Madan Mohan’s; Roshan-Rafi covered earlier); Qawwalis; Mukesh; and Asha Bhosle. Several readers requested that I write on their ghazals. Since I am covering them generally by singers, ghazal would have been an overlapping […]

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