Youtube - "manidan enbavan" from "Sumaithangi"

One of the more perfect songs in Tamil films. Great lyrics by Kannadasan, superb composition and orchestration by Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy, beautifyllu rendered by P.B.Srinivas, well enacted by Gemini Ganesan and unforgettably picturized by Sridhar. The Marina Beach has rarely been as enigmatically shown on screen.

Chitalkar.. a singer of a kind

Chitalkar Ramchandra was one of ttowering cinema personalities of his time - well built with the style of a leading man. It was difficult to believe that this man indulged in music and crafted some of the most heart-searing melodies of all-time. He is of course famously known as C.Ramchandra. While this name may ring a bell even for the modern generation,  the first name "Chitalkar" may not be as familiar. Not unless the person has dived at least a little into the ocean of old music. While Annasaab (as the man was fondly called) could sing pretty well, his musical obligations forced him to focus primarily on his composing skills. His singing hence took a back seat. But even with the limited time, he has sung some of the most well-remembered songs of Indian  films. In fact, he was good enough a singer to be used as a playback singer by other leading composers of the time like Anil Biswas, S.D.Burman and Roshan !! Lets take a peek into some of my personal favorites of Chitalkar the singer.

Albelaa, 1951 - Albelaa deserves a header all to itself here because this was where the singer and composer together hit their peak. The songs were the craze of the times, and continues to remain enduringly popular even amongst the youngsters. C.Ramchandra decided to make himself the voice of the hero Bhagvan in the film, and with Lata created some of the most popular songs ever - sholaa jo bhaDake, bholii suurat dil ke khoTe, diivaanaa paravaanaa, dhiire se aajaa rii akhiyan me and going solo in qismat kii havaa kabhii naram kabhii garam.

When I say that he vocalized for the hero in the film, dont think this was an isolated instance. In fact, Chitalkar is one of those few singers who playbacked for the three superstars of the time - the crazy, fun-filled mombaasaa on Raj Kapoor in Sargam, the zamaane-kaa daane daane pe likhaa hai and the soulful phir vahii chaa.Nd vahii Gam on Dev Anand in Baarish and perhaps most famously, rendering so stylishly kitanaa hasii.n hai mausam for Dilip Kumar in Aazaad. Most listeners take this to be a Talat rendition. In fact, Dilipsaab wanted this to be renndered by Talatsaab who couldnt make it to the recording. Chitalkar stepped in and sang it giving it the necessary Talat touch. Its one of the most successful C.Ramchandra compositions ever.

There is no doubt that Chitalkar's prime forte were the songs of fun where the singers needed to be as uninhibited and energetic as possible. It is wondrous to note that an otherwise serious Lata rendered some of CR's craziest songs with the man himself. baabaDii buubaDii baabaDii bam in Hangaamaa, yaar vaii vaii and mombasaa in Sargam, are baabaa in Shin shinaa ki booblaa boo, jhukatii hai duniyaa in Sagaai, dil kaa ye i.njan siiTiyaa.N maare from Ustad Pedro, o chaai machhuaa from Naadaan and so many more. Mohammed Rafi also joined Chitalkar in many a fun songs as baap baDaa naa bhaiyyaa,

But in equal measure has Chitalkar numerous classy romantic numbers - mostly duets with Lata. vo hamase chup hai.n from Sargam, ae aa.Nkh ab naa ronaa and lagaa hai kuchh aesaa nishaanaa kisii kaa from Sipahiyaa, chalii bhii aa ki teraa i.ntazaar kab se hai from Shatranj, jhuum jhuum jhuum jhuum rahii pyaar kii duniyaa from Hangaamaa, kahate hai.n pyaar kisako and phir vahii chaa.Nd vahii Gam from Baarish, and to round off with Albelaa, shaam Dhale khiDakii tale and mere dil kii ghaDii kare Tik Tik Tik.

What melodies these are !! Such a repertoire would make the best singers proud ! But then, C.Ramchandra did not expand his singing abilities much. As a result, once he slid as a composer, his singing also faded away. But his songs continue to delight us till this day..

Radio mysteries

My iPod is primarily filled with radio dramas these days, particularly the BBC radio productions of the Agatha Christie mysteries featurnig Hercule Poirot. The dramas are quite brilliantly done and the dramas owe their appeal in no small measure to John Moffet's voicing of Poirot. The man is quite brilliant - he sounds exactly how I imagined Poirot to speak as I read the books more than a decade ago. David Suchet did a superb job in the TV series and I think John Moffet has done equally well, if not better, in the radio series.

There are not too many Miss Marple mysteries reproduced and having heard Joan Whitfield as Miss Marple in the drama, I can understand why. The lady was good on TV but she doesnt have the same appeal on radio.

The great news is that the radio dramas are available for free as iTunes Podcasts !! Yup siree.. quite a few are already there and more are being updated every week. Its one podcast I make sure to keep updating.

"Sagaai" - an under-appreciated gem

When talking of C.Ramchandra and his great soundtracks, "Sagaai" gets usually overlooked. If so, its more to do with the utter luminousness of tracks like "Yasmeen", "Parchhaain" and "Albelaa" than with any deficiency with "Sagaai", for on repeated listens, I find myself becoming more and more enthralled with the quality of the soundtrack. This is a soundtrack worth treasuring. It has the usual CR-Lata heavenlies but also showcases, IMO, Rafi at his melodious best !! My favorites from this track :

i) o baabuu kaise dil pe kare.n kaabuu batalaaye jaa : This film followed the runaway success of Samaadhi which boasted of gore gore o baa.Nke chhore. CR has obviously tried to repeat the success of the song here using the same singers - and IMO, he succeeds brilliantly !! Its a total fun song where both Lata and Ameerbai sound wonderful. Where I occasionally skip gore gore o baa.Nke chhore, I never do o baabuu. Its a much livelier song..

ii) aa.Nkho.n se jo bhii aa.Nsuu bahegaa
iii) dil kii kahaanii kahanaa to chaahe.n
No track of CR can be complete with some Lata beauties and what beauties these are !! A slightly nasal tinge to Lata's voice make these songs extra sweet. Amongst the best of this great combo..

iv) udhar se tum chale aur ham idhar se : I saved my favorite for the last. Oh, what a song this is !! I can never ever tire of hearing this. Rafi was meant to sing like this. What flair, what melody and what style he brings into a simple and effortless rendition. Yes, Lata is sweet as ever but to me, its Rafi's singing that makes this song ultra-special to me. I might have no hesitation in nominating this as the best ever Lata-Rafi duet. CR managed to keep Rafi under restraint and hence got some of his best renditions.

The song has other nice songs too - a pleasing Lata-Talat duet mohobbat me aese zamaane bhii aaye, a bunch of fun songs, Lata's o DaDDiijii and her chorus backed triplet with Chitalkar and Rafi, jhukatii hai duniyaa jhukaane vaalaa chaahiye. Overall, an evergreen gem of a soundtrack.

Tere saath chal rahe hain yeh zameen - Angaarey

A charming duet from one of S.D.Burman's less successful yet fondly remembered tracks from the early 1950s. Talat and Lata dazzle here, clearly at their respective peaks. Lata sounds deliciously sweet..

Lata - "bahaaren phir bhii aaye.ngii"

One of the finest of Lata's melodies ever. This is indisputably great composer Shyam Sundar's biggest claim to eternal fame. An early Lata voice in all its raw beauty. Cant get enough of this..

"Paava manippu" - A timeless soundtrack

Director Bhimsingh had established a nice team around making simple, family themed melodramas usually starring Sivaji Ganesan in the lead with Savitri, Gemini Ganesan, Devika, Balayya, Ranga Rao, Thangavelu and Chandrababu making regular appearences as well. "Paava manippu" came after "Pathi bhakthi" which was the director's first big success. But this was the film which really established the Bhimsingh theme of "small family stories". And of course, it boasted of sensational music.

Viswanathan Ramamoorthy had delivered brilliantly for Bhimsing in "Pathi bhakthi" but even by their own exalted standards, "Paava manippu" was a stunner. Every song in the track is worth treasuring for centuries and milleniums.. TMS, P.Suseela and P.B.Srinivas all at the peak of their powers. My favorites from this track :

vandha naaL mudhal : TMS is awesome. Kannadasan pens a critical take on humans and even a Tamil illiterate like me is wondered by these words :

paravaiai kaNdaan vimaanam padaiththaan
paayum meengalil padaginaikkandaan
edhiroli kaettaan vaanoli padaiththaan
edhanaikkandaan panamdhanaip padaiththan

A poor translation :

<i>he saw the birds and invented planes
the leaping fishes gave him the idea of boats
echoes he heard and created the radio
what did he see to create money</i>

I have always felt that the last line in the stanza we hear is an edited or a resung version - a badly done one at that. If you hear the stanza, the sound of the last line stands out obviously. What did Kannadasan actually pen in there ? I recall having heard somewhere "madhangaLai padaiththaan" instead of "panamdhanaip padaiththan" (meaning religions or castes). I wonder...

paal irukkum [Youtube] : A superlative Suseela solo going on Devika. The prelude music to the melody is a representative of the composers duo's orchestral finesse and the reason why they were such a revolution in Tamil cinema. So breezy, yet it hits you where it should.

aththaan ennaththaan : Perhaps the most famous Tamil song ever. Lata Mangeshkar's statement at the time to this song being one of her favorites raised this song's popularity all over the country and it has acquired a cult status, a song synonmous with the romance of a shy girl. Wonderful lyrics . superlative composition and subdued orchestration and beautiful singing.. perfection.

Other superb songs in the track include TMS' "silar siripaar silar azuvaar" and P.B.Srinivas' "kaalangalil aval vasantham". It is interesting that though this film has Gemini Ganesan in just a supporting role, the PBS song has become the definitive Gemini Ganesan song. No retrospect of PBS or Gemini Ganesan can ever be complete without a mention of this hugely popular melody.

A stellar soundtrack.. one of my all-time favorites !!

Jab jab phool khile tumhe yaad kiya - Shikast

A stunning beauty from Shankar Jaikishan during the pair's creatively peak years of the early 1950s. Lata and Talat sang a number of songs for SJ during this period and this duet is one of their very best. One of the definitive melodies of the time..

Noorjehan "Badi mushkil se" _ Lakhon me ek

A Pakistani song for a change. Noorjehan of course is the singer. I have heard and much enjoyed the song earlier. Nice to see it here..

Sapno ki suhani duniya ko - Shikast

One of Talat's most beautiful melodies in a film that is sadly forgotten today. I thought it was one of the best Dilip Kumar films of the time. Nalini Jaywant looks lovely as ever. Talat sounds his best and goes perfectly on Dilip. A melody forever

Reducing the size of a movie file for Youtube

I am rather new to uploading files on Youtube. I love the site and hence was surprised at how long it took to upload a song I had extracted from the "Garam coat" VCD movie. Took forever. On investigating, I found that the size of the song file was over 30MB !! No wonder it took so long. Then started my hunt to find tools that compressed a movie file on Windoze. I know a few apps on the Mac which could do this but not on Windoze. I downloaded plenty of apps which promised to do this but either they were too unfriendly or just didnt work. Finally, I was referred to this great tutorial where the author demonstrates how you could use the inbuilt Windows Movie Maker for this. I then experimented by reducing the size of this song to just 3MB and it worked just great. So a big thanks to the author of the tutorial..

Man mein kisi ki - Aaraam

My all-time favorite song can now be viewed on Youtube. Lata is sweet as honey, piano just out of this world, Madhubala so fresh and lovely though she falls short on acting the song on screen. Enjoy this song..

Anilda - thou art my God !

Yeh kis manzil pe le aayee - Main Suhagan Hoon

A wealth of videos of rare, old songs is available on Youtube. I will link to some of the ones I found and much enjoyed. Hope you like em as well. Thanks go to the kind souls who shared these videos with the rest of the world.

A delicious Talat gem. This is from a 1966 film and Talat's voice was still good enough to lend the perfect ambience to rhis melody. This shows that had the music of the times been along the lines of the 50s when Talat dominated, we could well have seen Talat's career continue with success till the late 1960s.

"Milan"- a classic soundtrack

Watched the 1946 Dilip Kumar starrer “Milan” again yesterday and lived through the gorgeous Anil Biswas melodies all over again. There is no question that this is amongst the greatest of all Anilda sioundtracks and belongs to the top league of soundtracks like “Taraanaa”, “Aaraam” and “Kismat” by the same man. Parul Ghosh rules the track with four stunners and Shankardas Gupta, if I remember right, makes his first appearence in Anilda's music.

The film starts with a very young Dilip Kumar walking down the street and hearing "gun gun gun gun bole bha.Nvaravaa" being sung by his lady love - rendered so beautifully by Parul. You can almost feel a gentle breeze wafting across you when you hear Parul singing this song, so effortless and simple is her style. Then that masterpiece of a melody "suhaanii beriyaa biitii jaaye".. what a song that is !! Parul breezes through the melody.. at her best. The two other Parul songs are heavier, more melancholic but no less beautiful. "mai.n kisakii laaj nibhaauu.N" captures the dilemma of the heroine to a nicety while "jisane banaadii baa.Nsurii giit usii ke gaaye jaa" is one of my personal favorites. All in all, a veritable Parul Ghosh treasure here. Amidst all these treasures, it may be a trifle difficult to remember the two male-voiced songs in the film "vo kahe.n aap se" and "uupar hai baadriyaa kaarii". The latter is a masterpiece which captures the boatman's philosophy and the composition conveys the dark looming clouds and impending tragedies without going overboard. This is Anilda's genius - he captures the mood of the sequence without resorting to melodrama.


All in all. "Milan" is one of the treasure tracks of Hindi cinema and worth a million hears !

A gorgeous melody.. not as good a picturization

Roshan stands no 3 on my list of best composers for Lata which is no mean feat considering the people just below him are legends like Salil Chowdhury, Sajjad Husain. Sachin Dev Burman, Madan Mohan etc. and one of the prime reasons for this exalted position is demonstrated in the sublime melody from "Zindagi aur hum" - "tuu hamako dekh aur hamaarii nazar se dekh". The song is a musical triumph of Lata's divine singing, Roshan's simplistic, ethereal melody creation and the romantic lyrics. I imagine a moonlit night with Nalini Jaywant gently caressing her lover's hair as he lies on her lap.. a gentle breeze blows across the trees.. Nalini Jaywant because for one she is the heroine of this film (as per the titles) and more importantly, I think she is one of the best emoters to Lata's singing. "Naubahaar" is an example. But I was sorely disappointed to see (thanks to a kind soul at Youtube) that the song was picturized on Chand Usmani and the picturization itself was patchy and hardly as romantic as the song intends to me. Where is the gentleness, that subdued but undoubtable sensuality that the song sings ? Ah well.. just another instance of the picturization and the song being in different directions altogether...

The CR series - held up a bit

I switched jobs last week and going to my new office this week so time has been too insufficient to do sufficent justice to the musical flights of C.Ramchandra during the 1951-55 period I had started. However, I have created a complete list of songs that CR composed during this period - derived of course from the Geet Kosh. I will share this document as well in my next post when I get to expanding on the memorable melodies that this great man created in 1952.

Till then, adieu.

C.Ramchandra - A tribute

Jan 5th was C.Ramchandra's 26th death anniversary. I had wanted to start a run through the musical legend's compositions a little earlier so that at least a start is made by that time. But unfortunately, I got a little busy in other things and I am able to provide a first instalment of my series almost a week after the aniversary. However, that in no way diminishes the intent of the series which is to focus on Annasaab's career through his zenith years of the early 1950s.

What is unique about Annasaab is that while the other leading composers of the day like Naushad only worked with big banners, C.Ramchandra lent his musical talents to all kinds of films - be it for bigger directors like V.Shantaram or for B-grade stunt films of Sheikh Mukhtar. The quality of his music is consistently great regardless of the directors or the stars. His music was the prime reason for the success of films like Albelaa and Khazaanaa.

Lets start looking at the music that C.Ramchandra delivered during his peak years between 1951 and 1955. Each article takes one year at a time and looks at each film he composed during that year and the melodies therein. I hope it is of interest to you :)

1951
Naushad, C.Ramchandra and Husnlal Bhagatram ruled the box office with Anil Biswas the undisputed Emperor who had relinquished the race. C.Ramchandra staked his claims as the Numero Uno in no uncertain as he delivered three stellar soundtracks during the year, one of them becoming a definitive soundtrack of the period. His tuning with Lata Mangeshkar scaled higher peaks. Talat Mahmood entered his musical realm for the first time while he himself had a hugely successful year as a singer. So all in all, 1951 was a very happy year indeed for C.Ramchandra.

Albelaa- There is very little introduction required to this soundtrack. 57 years later, the songs of the film still resound across the country. The marriage bandwallahs still use these songs extensively, feet start dancing of their own accord as the charming Lata & Chitalkar duets play out. The soundtrack also acts as a showcase of all C.Ramchandra's music. There are the fun songs, the sweet, romantic Lata melodies, and the pleasing romantic duets.

Its well known that C.Ramchandra was inspired immensely by Benny Goldman's music and used that form in many of his songs and most successfully in Albelaa. His duets with Lata, diivaanaa ye paravaanaa and sholaa jo bhaDake are both such inspirations. . mere dil ki ghaDii kare Tik Tik Tik and shaam Dhale khiDakii tale are amongst the most popular duets ever, while the now-mandatory Lata solos took the forms of such beauties as dil dhaDake nazar sharamaaye to samajho pyaar ho gayaa and balamaa baDaa naadaan re and that lullaby-of-lullabies dhiire se aajaa rii akhiyan me. Add to those the pure Chitalkar fun in o beTaajii qismar kii havaa kabhii naram and bholii suurat dil ke khoTe. All in all, truly one of all-time great soundtracks.

List of songs :
Gazab kii nii.nd..mahafil me merii kaun ye (Mohd Rafi & Lata Mangeshkar)
dhiire se aajaa rii akhiyan me (1) (Lata Mangeshkar)
diivaanaa paravaanaa shamaa pe aake (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)
hasiino.n se muhobbat kaa (Chitalkar)
kabhii kaalii ratiyaa.N...o beTaajii qismat kii (Chitalkar)
mere dil kii ghaDii kare Tik Tik Tik (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)
dil dhaDakae nazar sharamaaye (Lata Mangeshkar)
shaam Dhale khiDakii tale (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)
balamaa baDaa naadaan re (Lata Mangeshkar)
bholii suurat dil ke khoTe (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)
dhiire se aajaa rii akhiyan me (2) (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)
sholaa jo bhaDake dil meraa dhaDake (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar)


Khazaanaa : This Madhubala-Nisar Khan starrer was an amazing cascade of melodies. CR didnt need big banners to inspire him. Always open to experimentation, he used a lot of African folk music sound in the film.

muhabbat pe itanii javaanii na hotii (Lata Mangeshkar) : A typical Lata-CR melody. Focus on just the sweetness of Lata's voice bringing out the coyness of the character.
bam biyaanaa..do diivaano.n ka afsaanaa (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar) : Starts with the sounds of African tribal drums then eases to a typical Lata duet. A very pleasing one at that.
soii soii chaa.Ndanii hai(Lata Mangeshkar) : One of the contenders for the top-10 Lata-CR melodies. A charming, melodious, romantic number. Lata doesnt sound this sweet with any other composer :)
baabaDii buubaDii bam bam bam (Chitalkar & Lata Mangeshkar) : A rock-and-roll style song well before the advent of rock and roll. This is one of my very favorite CR songs because of the sheer energy it exudes but its not noisy at all. Its all about the beats and not the volume. A sheer joy.
dhiire dhiire Gam kaa zamaanaa gayaa (Lata Mangeshkar) : Pleasing chorus backed Lata melody
mujhe tumase bahut hai pyaar (Mohd Rafi & Lata Mangeshkar) : CR always does the Rafi-Lata duets very well. I always get the feeling that he has ordered Rafi not to vent "too much emotions" in his songs which is why perhaps Rafi sounds so restrained and hence unjarring in CR's songs :) While the "Sagaai" duet remains my Rafi favorite melody with CR, this is not too far behind.
ae chaa.Nd pyaar meraa tujhase ye (Lata Mangeshkar) : An absolute stunner. CR was a master at orchestrating his songs and the thrilling violin pieces in the song are worth travelling miles to hear. The way the violin moves after Lata sings "tum bevafaa na honaa" is so wonderful. An easy walk-in to my top 10 CR-Lata list.
zambo chii kolaa..kar de zaraa ishaaraa (Lata Mangeshkar) : One would hardly expect a sad melody when hearing the prelude music to the song. But it turns out to another charming piece.

More to come...

Madan Mohan's best : His first decade

Madan Mohan is a very curious composer in many ways. Distinguished from the beginning as a composer of high quality, today he is toasted as the numero-uno composer for Lata. That of course is not true. But certainly, Madan has weathered time much better than most of his seniors and peers of superior quality. C.Ramchandra and Anil Biswas hardly ring a bell in today's music listeners' ears, but chances are high that Madan Mohan's name will bring a spark of recognition.

While you feel happy for the man who in his lifetime never got his due, it is a little sad to note that the music for which he is receiving accolades today is hardly his best. His post-"Adalat" output is inconsistent, often showing signs of a man trying to live up to an image - the image of a ghazal king. No question that some of his melodies in "Anpadh", "Woh kaun thi", "Mera Saya" et al. But Madan's freshest compositions and his superior ones (IMO), came during the 1951-57 phase with Lata and Talat. Consider the cascade of such brilliant soundtracks as

.. Adaa : Lata's "priitam merii duniyaa me" and Talat's "jis dil me basaanaa chaahaa thaa" make this a track to own and listen to repeatedly.

.. Madhosh : Talat's "merii yaad me" was the first true success of Madan's career and remained one his personal favourites. Talat was hitting the zenith of his career and he sounds simply thrilling here. Lata's melodies like "chhoD mujhe naa jaanaa" and "mujhe ho gayaa tumas epyaar" are overshadowed.

.. Aashiyaanaa : One of Madan's great tracks. Lata had a whole host of unforgettable melodies - "tum chaa.Nd ke saath chale aao", "mere piyaa se koii jaake kahade", "mukh moD naa lenaa saajanaa", "samaa hai bahaar kaa" and the tandem with Talat, "meraa qaraar lejaa" . Then there is Talat's "mai.n paagal meraa manavaa paagal" - one of my very favourite Talat melodies. This is Madan at his very melodious best.

.. Khoobsoorat : Just the two Talat masterpieces "merii raato.n ke" and "mohobbat me qashish hogii" make this a track worth trasuring.

.. Chacha Chodhury : Has Asha ever sounded sweeter than in "mere piyaa chheDe jiyaa" ? A superb melody, sadly ignored even by the legions of Asha devotees.

.. Baghi : "dard ki ae raat guzar jaa", "hamaare baad ab mehafil me", "kahii.n bin aag jale naa paravaanaa" among others make this a veritable Lata-Madan track of desert-island value !

.. Railway Platform : To me, "chaa.Nd madham hai" is a Lata song to die for. It belongs to that category of songs which leave you awestruck, haunted.. you just are lost !! Madan did not make such songs very often.. this is tops !

1957 saw Madan scaling new peaks with "Dekh Kabira Roya" which takes my vote for Madan's greatest ever soundtrack. Madan tries his hand at a variety of musical moods. His classical leanings and his expertise at blending them to a film song come out strongly in "kaun aayaa mere man ke dvaare" and "merii viinaa tum bin roye", typical ghazal tones in "ham se aayaa na gayaa", "ashqo.n se terii hamane" and "tuu pyaar kare yaa Tukaraaye" and the breezy melodies, "ham pa.nchhii mastaane" and "ham bulaate hii rahe". We dont get such overall outstanding soundtracks too often. And look at the singers - Lata, Asha, Geeta, Talat, Manna Dey and Rafi. Almost every top singer of the day.. a treasure indeed !!

To round off the decade, the first and truly golden phase of Madan's career, is "Mohar" - another track with a number of singers together. Lata holds centre spot again with the unforgettable "tum ho saath raat bhii hasiin hai" and the pleasing duet with Rqfi "ae hamasafar bataa de". Hemantda was used very very rarely by Madan - "kho gayaa jaane kahaa.N" was perhaps his only solo for him which is one of Hemantda's well remembered songs. Talat makes it a track to treasure with the glittering "yaad jab aaye terii", a composition cast in the Sajjad style. When I first heard this melody, I assumed the composer to be Sajjad !

Madan had much greater successes perhaps in the next decade but in my opinion, the brilliance of these tracks and others in his first decade were far superior in terms of quality, diversity and fresheness.

"Yaasmeen" - a CR-Lata zenith !

C.Ramchandra is a name that is recalled by most even today, if only for the more popular "Anarkali" and "Albela" soundtracks. But for all the beauty of these tracks, I am most CR fans would vouch for "Yasmeen" as the defining Lata-CR soundtrack. While I generally consider "Sangeeta" a shade superior, when I hear the gentle despair of Lata in "ab vo raate.n kahaa.N", I am tempted - nay, convinced - to rate "Yaasmeen" higher. What a melody it is !! What genius ! What brilliant orchestration, composition and rendition. Simple poetry.. just plain awesome. I had the good fortune to get the video of this song recently. And seeing a ravishing Vyjantimala render the song does no harm at all to the whole musical experience.

CR saab - wherever you are in Heaven, I hope thats the sweetest spot there, for you deserve it so for enriching our lives with such great music. Thank you Sir !

Remembering Hansraj Behl

Hansraj Behl is one of those great composers of the golden age of Hindi film music who once was a well-known name but is now confined to the memory of a few music lovers. His musical genius shines through in a host of classic melodies from the late 40s through to the 60s. He has created something memorable with a number of leading singers of the day. He also has a substantial output in Punjabi cinema. His best compositions were however reserved for Lata though quantity wise, he has worked more with Asha and Madhubala Jhaveri. Amongst male singers, Rafi and Talat have sung many of the legend's memorable compositions.

Here are some of my favourite Hansrajji's creations :

haaye chandaa gaye parades(Lata/Chakori, 1949) : Lata at her sweetest, this is a song that never ceases to delight. The emotions of a young girl in love are so beautifully captured.

saajan kii oT leke(Lata & Rafi/Zeverat, 1949) : This has grown on me to become one of my favourite duets. There is such a vigour to the song, a life to it which is infectious. There is of course a strong Punjabi flavour which is not surprising.

dil e naashaad ko jiine kii(Lata/Chunariyaa, 1948) : This song has Ghulam Haider written all over it. Hansrajji was Masterji's (as Ghulam Haider was called) assistant for some time. A ghazal, this is one of Lata's earliest ghazals and she has rendred it beautifully.

dil meraa teraa diivaanaa(Talat & Madhubala Jhaveri/Apni Izzat, 1952) : An out-of-the world melody that ranks as amongst the finest duets of all time. Absolute melody.. a soft, gentle romantic air fills the air when you hear the singers hold sway. Madhubala Jhaveri is a delight to hear. Innocence and charm all over. Talat is just regal.. has there ever been more romantic a voice ? The other duet by the same singers from this film, pyaar kii rut dora.ngii saajan is equally magnificent.

kisii gariib kaa ghar baadashaah ne luuT litaa(Talat/Chunariyaa, 1948) : A typical Talat blue song.. melancholic and just honey to the ears !

jab raat nahii kaTatii(Lata/Changez Khan, 1956) : Another masterpiece from Lata. Lata's rendition, the orchestration just move you to tears. Soft, deeply moving.. they just dont make em like this any more ! Rafi's "mohobbat zindaa rahatii hai" from this film is much more popular and well-remembered. In contrast to the gentle lament of the Lata song, this is a powerful, forceful cry from the hero asking his love to come to him. Rafi's high-voltage, brilliant rendition makes it a song to be treasured for long.

haaye jiyaa roye(Lata/Milan, 1958) : Now, Lata has sung magnificent songs with the top composers of the day. This song is fit enough to be compared with any song she has sung. It is definitely one of her best songs and is for sure Hansraj Behl's finest composition. The pathos of the song can almost be touched. Its one of those perfect songs. The orchestra is suitably muted allowing Lata to hold forth. This masterpiece came at a time when the older line of composers were slowly being moved out and a few composers only remained in business into the next decade. This thrilling melody just proves that popularity and film's success dont necessarily define the composer's class.

nain dvaar se man me vo aake(Mukesh & Lata/Saawan, 1959) : Another memorable creation, with the duet sung by the lead singers at different paces and two pitches. Mukesh sings in a sad mood at a very low pitch and slow pace and Lata backed by chorus coneys the happier mood, sings at a much faster pace and at a high pitch. Transitions from one mood to another have been done brilliantly too. The film boasts of other memorable numbers also like Rafi-Shamshad duet "bhiigaa bhiigaa pyar kaa samaa" and Lata's "kanhaa chheDo baa.Nsurii".

jahaa.N Daal Daal me sone kii chhiDiyaa(Rafi/Changez Khan, 1964) : Arguably, the most famous and definitely my most favourite patriotic song of all time. The passionate patriotism in the song gives you gooseflesh. Rafi has rendered it as only he can. Magnificent !! Lata's "o diladaar o mere yaar" from this film is also a delightful piece which I heard for the first time recently and its on the top of my Most Played songs list in iTunes for this month :)


Those are some of Hansraj Behl's songs that I treasure. He remains an undersung composer who deserves to be recognized a lot more for his great creations. But then, when you think about it, the biggest achievement of an artist is the longevity of his art. How his creations are remembered in time. In that respect, he is a great achiever all right !!