Guest article by Piyush M Pandya (originally in Gujarati) and Ashok M Vaishnav (English translation) as a tribute to Anthony Gonsalves (12 June 1927 – 18 January 2012)
(Greg Booth starts his celebrated book on the musicians and arrangers, “Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai’s Film Studios”, with the introductory chapter titled, “Who Is Anthony Gonsalves”. We all, of course, know that he was one of the three brothers of Manmohan Desai’s “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977), played on the screen by Amitabh Bachchan, who burst out of a huge Easter egg, singing the suerhit song “My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves”.
However, not many know that LP composed this song as a tribute to Pyarelal’s violin guru, Anthony Gosalves. Booth also points to the irony of the biggest star of Hindi films, The Amitabh Bachchan playing a character and lip-sync a song named after a musician and arranger who lived a life of anonymity.
Anthony Gonsalves was regarded as the first arranger of Hindi films, starting his career from the 1940s. Continuing their series of tribute to what they call “The Sculptors of Film Music”, the guest writers Piyush M Pandya and Ashok M Vaishnav now answer the question, “Who Was Anthony Gonsalves”. Their first article was devoted to Sebastian D’Souza. Thank you Piyushji and Ashokji for another highly informative article on one of the greatest musicians and arrangers. – AK)
Even a very keen follower of film music would it find it difficult to list the music arrangers and instrument players beyond a few, more by luck than design, handpicked popular names. When radio was the major source of listening to the film songs, one possible reason that music arrangers and instrument players hardly got any mention when the song was played was that for each song such a list would probably take more time than possibly the actual paying time of the song, typically recorded on one side of a 78-RPM shellac record. By the time FM radio listening generation came in, this genre of supporting music was confined to pre-programmed database of ‘digitally generated’ sounds of digital or electronic instruments. So, when the music director himself was becoming more of an assembler, it would be surprising if any other support sources would have got some mention.
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