Ek Aur Yaad....

Some thoughts on the passing of Nalini Jaywant who moved on last week. I do not know how old she was but I am sure the newspapers in India carried the usual cliched headlines: "The End of an Era" or "Another Great Luminary is Doused".

Truth to tell, the era has continued to end a little down the years with the passing of each cine-personality who has left, but has remained alive and well in the songs that we listen to and in the memories that we still share. I, for one, am convinced that as long our generation lasts we will remember those who created nostalgia in us! Even now during a visit to the city of one's birth one automatically looks for (and sees in the mind's eye) some billboard that used to hang at some spot in Opera House or Lamington Road. For that was, what I would like to call, the age of 'persona', when a face peering down from the billboard drew the throngs to the movie house.

Nalini Jaywant was one such face that conjures up that beautifully emotive era. It is, however, unfortunate that her name does not always come up in discussions of the actresses we have known. Not her fault: look at the films she acted in: apart from Meena Kumari I know of no other actress of that period who was given such short shrift, as was Nalini Jaywant.

The biggest banners that she acted for were Kardar Films and Filmistan Ltd. The first was a prolific banner that churned out one bad remake of western films after another. Think of 'Jadoo' and you think of 'The Loves of Carmen': thereby hangs a tale! What lifted Jadoo, however, was the Naushad Ali-Shakeel Badayuni tandem, and Nalini Jaywant's lipsynch of that master's impossibly difficult compositions for that film, vocalized by the great Shamshad Begum and Lata. And then there was Kardar's Naujawan, also in 1951 of which I know nothing but the great compositions of SD Burman.

Filmistan Ltd., that unabashedly lachrymose banner, gave her roles in films like Samadhi (1950) and a fine role in Nastik (1954) and Bombay Talkies cast her in its Sangram (1950). All three of these films also had fabulous music by the late C. Ramchandra. She came back to Filmistan in the mid-50s with two lighter but silly films like Munimji (1955) and Hum Sub Chor Hain (1956), both of which are remembered today for their frothy music: the one with SD Burman and the other with OP Nayyar.

Towards the late-50s she starred in a film called Miss Bombay, as a wife who could not forget her lover (Ajit) and would rather see him waste away before her eyes than betray her husband (Rehman). That was a good solid role in a movie that suffered from bad, nay, poor direction. There was also Ramesh Saigal's Railway Platform in 1955 (Sunil Dutt's debut) which is largely remembered for a couple of Sahir Ludhianvi's great lyrics set to music by Madan Mohan.

So, what am I going to remember her for? Well (and call me biased) for the roles that I have seen her in but most of all for what she did for director Raj Khosla as the nautch-girl in Nav Ketan's Kalapani (a fine foil there for Madhubala), and for Ramesh Saigal in Shikast in which she matched Dilip Kumar's virtuosity, breath for painful breath. An underrated classic, this film did not go much beyond the critical acclaim it received upon its release in 1953 and is remembered today mainly for its brilliant soundtrack by Shankar-Jaikishan. But then, isn't that what this blog is all about?

R.I.P.

Continuum

People, you never know who you will bump into on cyberspace. Just when I thought that the age of Kundanlal Saigal and Pankaj Mallik was done with (in the media, anyway), along comes Dr. Sangita Nerurkar to completely bowl me over. Making the YouTube your alter-बसेरा  throws you in league with a wealth of individuals who share your passion for vintage film music.

I plead guilty to stifling an occasional snigger when I listen to valiant attempts made by amateurs uploading their singing of the classics on the tube, but always immediately kick myself for not having the courage to do so myself. This is one way that admirers of an unique musical tradition show their passion and their love for it, and short of listening to the great Radio Ceylon in the days of yore, or singing along as a song unfolded during one of the numerous re-releases of a film in those days, I have known of no other greater public display of feeling for a five-minute track. But I digress......

....if only to drive home the point that a song recorded more than half a century ago and still loved, can be re-recorded today with exactly the same enunciation, the same feeling and, more importantly, have its beauty realized once again by someone from a newer generation.  Dr. Nerurkar's soprano might jar those who will not have anything but K L Saigal's deep baritone (Lata's much under-rated Shraddhanjali suffered in that way, all those years ago), and yet she reins in her resonance even as she plunges to the lower notes. It is here that she matches the timbre in her voice beautifully with that of the great Bengali female singers of the New Theaters era. The magic in her voice is undeniable: so is her fascination for an age in popular music that is long past her own. Thank you, Doctor: you just did me a random act of kindness.

When Lata Had The Last Laugh!

Anything can happen on a Thursday. All through my school days it was Thursday that I looked forward to because of the solitude that the day off from school gave me: pretty much on my own, reading my books and more importantly listening to the music that would eventually coalesce into a major part of the subconscious. Years later, Thursday would become a day of revival: like today. Memories surfacing.

I was out walking earlier this evening when a discussion I had with friend Sharad Saklecha months ago emerged. It involved Lata Mangeshkar and a chance remark she had made during an interview not too long go. The interviewer had asked her what, at this stage in her life, she missed the most. The subdued but stunning response was: "I wish I had learned to sing!"

I remember Sharad and myself laughing at the remark and dismissing it as sheer sanctimony.  After all, लताबाई has been and will always remain to millions of us the epitome of great singing. But something that I came across just the other day has left me musing upon her remark, assessing her own singing. It was her rendering of Narendra Sharma's Jyoti Kalash Chhalke from Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan (1961), composed by the late Sudhir Phadke. 

Sudhir Phadke seemed to have disappeared from the Hindi film scene no sooner than he had entered upon it. True, he had made Lata sing for him in films like Malti Madhav and a couple of others whose names now evade me, in the 50s, and Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan might as well have been his swan song (I, personally, never heard of him again). But what a swan song it was. He was denied the fame and glory reached by other contemporary Marathi music directors like Chitalkar Ramchandra and Vasant Desai. However, he did give Lata at least one of the 10 best of her career i.e. Jyoti Kalash Chhalke....a song that defies definition and as at least one admirer puts it, is divinity itself.

As it so often happened in those days, before music directors made the playback singers record their creations, they themselves sang the songs to show them the way. Quite a few of those tracks have survived: among them, Jyoti Kalash and to name another, C. Ramchandra singing Radha Na Bole, his own dainty from Azad (1954). To listen to Sudhirji singing Jyoti kalash chhalke before a live audience and to watch the expressions on his face as he invites his audience to share his feeling at the coming of a new morn, is ecstasy itself.

Perhaps I have read too much into this video: I leave you to judge for yourself. Perhaps, again, it was this rendering that Lataji used as a touchstone to make the kind of comment she made about herself: this, and other recordings she has made along with classical singers like DV Paluskar.

I have appended two video clips of this famed composition. This first one is the actual clip from the movie Bhabhi Ki Chudiyan beautifully emoted by the late Meena Kumari supported by fine chiaroscuro from the cameraman......

and the other, appearing below, is the same song sung by Sudhir Phadke for a live audience. 

While both leave their own impact, unfortunately, the ravages of time are undeniably visible.
The idea is simple.....they are ushering in a new day.

Salaams! 

Why Groove78?

Why, indeed. When time began for me, circa the mid-40s, film music had firmly established itself not as much via the radio, as by the gramophone disc turning around a spindle at the rate of 78 revolutions per minute. Recording companies like Columbia and New Theatres kept bakelite in business, churning out track after track of musical delight from studios in Bombay and Calcutta. The mighty HMV, though already established elsewhere in the western world, was yet to begin its forays into film music in India.

So what's all this leading to? Well, that's where we first heard our music and that's where our memories took root. In its day the '78' was no less a marvel of recording than the CD is today. There is one that still hangs framed on the wall of my living room, each groove a testimony to the hundreds of songs listened to, down the decades. Listening to the '78' recording of a song is not the same as listening to its fuller version on the CD~or even the '78' rpm version. The one was the original, the other a reproduction. Most of us from that generation, while listening to the CD hark back to the original scratch of stylus on bakelite.

Hence the name of this blog. It may not feature in future posts here, but will be the guiding force behind them all......Nor does this blog purport to reconstruct the history of music recording in cinema. The aim is to have people contribute their memories and relive their experiences of the music that has gone before today.....Once again, welcome.

In The Beginning...

When I first decided to scribble something in cyberspace I ran the idea by my very cheeky nephew. He asked me what I was aiming at. Read on: 
"Well", (that's me), "something on Hindi film music." 
The twinkle in his eyes raised his brows to the ceiling: "Why don't you write about something you know something about!!!" (that's him).
I could have smacked the fellow but the thought remained hanging in midair. Just because I could remember some song लताबाई sang in some film and the name of the संगीतकार, does not make me a ज्ञानी. 
Believe it or not, over the years that I have listened to film music I have been convinced that there is much more to it than the "vacuity" it has been stigmatized with. There is depth and there is an evocation of life....and the streets of Bombay of yesteryear that I roamed and grew up on, the people I have met, the first gramophone record I saw whirling on dad's HMV and everything else that has gone hand-in-hand with all that.
I know that there are people out there who know more than I do.....So, all of you, get aboard my bandwagon.