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

Songs on themes

Songs of Kinare

September 17, 2012

When I wrote on the songs of nadi and naav sometime back, I thought one kind of journey was complete (with Harvey’s majhi). But I had missed a crucial element as I realised from Ashok Vaishnavji’s comments. The boat has to reach its shore, and the journey is not complete till you have reached kinare.

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Songs of Jigar

September 7, 2012

In my last post on Mukesh and his ‘dil’ songs, there was a song, Ae jaan-e-jigar dil mein samane aa ja. Urdu poetry gives the same status to jigar as to dil as a metaphor for something very vital and very dear. There are also other examples of ‘dil’ and ‘jigar’ being used together and […]

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Mukesh and his romance with ‘Dil’

August 27, 2012

A tribute on his death anniversary August 27 Everyone is born with a heart, but that does not make everyone a romantic. There was something special about Mukesh and ‘dil’, not only his romantic heart but his romancing the heart. Mukesh started his journey with ‘dil’. As a young lad, while singing at his sister’s […]

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Songs of Naiya

July 16, 2012

When I was writing my last post on the Songs of River, I remembered Harvey had done some time back majhi (boatman) songs. Naav or naiya is the link between the two. As a matter of fact there cannot be a majhi without a naav, whereas a naav can by itself be propelled by the […]

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Songs of River

July 1, 2012

In an interesting coincidence when this site carried Subodh’s article on music from the mountains, Harvey was doing songs of clouds. Mountains and clouds share a very intimate relationship. Their union gives rise to rivers. With this pedigree, it is no wonder some of the most beautiful songs are based on river, though no Raga […]

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Some perspectives on Jhumka gira re

March 8, 2012

Every married man encounters this experience quite often – you are all dressed up to go to a wedding, you go out to take out your car. The dear wife should have by then locked the house and come to the driveway. But you wait and wait, yet there is no sign of her. You […]

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My favourite zulf songs

July 9, 2011

A common popular theme on the blog land is to put up a variety of favourite lists, such as ‘My ten favourite ??? songs’. This could be on a person (Mukesh, Naushad, Dev Anand etc) or a theme (birthday, holi, wedding etc.) or an object (train, rain, tonga etc.) Some creative bloggers have come up […]

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New Theatres’ romance with Prem

May 29, 2011

Best love songs of Vintage Era I have been in the New Theatres mood since I wrote my last post on Pankaj Mullick. BN Sircar established New Theatres in Calcutta in 1931, i.e. the same year the first talkie Alam Ara was released in Bombay. Music has been an integral part and a defining feature […]

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The World Cup mania: A song to cricket

April 1, 2011

‘She’ ne khela ‘he’ se aaj cricket match When the entire country is caught in the frenzy of the One-day Cricket World Cup, I get to hear today a fun song on cricket from the film Love Marriage (1959). It is surprising I had not heard this song before. Had Vividh Bharti kept it on […]

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Twin songs: A front runner and a laggard

July 31, 2010

We all remember the following evergreen songs: Song Singer Film Music director Ae mere dil kahin aur chal Talat Mahmood Daag (1952) Shankar Jaikishan Dil matwala lakh sambhala Talat Mahmood Bewafa (1952) AR Qureshi Chali Radhe rani Manna Dey Parineeta (1953) Arun Kumar Mukherji Mera qaraar le ja Talat Mahmood Ashiana (1952) Madan Mohan Na […]

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