Music And Movies

  The link to all parts of this series is given here: Series Links Though Lata's first Hindi film song, for Ghulam Haider, was in 1948, by 1950, she had already built a reputation for herself in the film industry. She was slowly becoming the number one female singer, with music directors trusting her to carry the film's music on her frail shoulders. Lata showed that she was ready to take on the responsibility and delivered hit after hit. Anil Biswas was to say, "After Lata entered the field, music directors lost their fear. Now they could compose fearlessly, being confident that Lata would deliver whatever they had conceived." By the time we enter the 1950s, we see Lata was already the emerging star. The 1950s also saw the rise was newer music directors, who would later make a great name for themselves: Madanmohan, Salil Choudhary, Jaidev, S D Burman, and O P Nayyar. The other music directors like Shankar Jaikishen, Roshan, and C Ramachandra, who had started their car...

The link to all parts of this series is given here: Series Links In the last part, we saw the partnership between music director Anil Biswas and Lata Mangeshkar. Anil Biswas was a hugely influential music director and I had mentioned how he had mentored Lata in her early days. The other major music director of those times was Naushad. He was one of the 'hit' music directors of those and was much sought after by everyone. By the time Lata entered the industry, he was already a leading music director who had given major hits with Noorjahan, Zorabai, and others. In this part, we will look at the songs of the Naushad Lata combination. Naushad's orchestration was different from that of Anil Biswas. In Anilda's orchestration, the rhythm is subtle in most songs; it doesn't dominate the song. The singing also requires more modulation. In Naushad's early Lata songs, the domination of rhythm can be clearly heard. The singing is more open-throated. In fact, in the early so...