Music And Movies

The link to all parts of this series is given here: Series Links Every music lover has their own concept of what was the Golden Era of Hindi film music. Some, like me, believe that the late 40s and the early 50s were the greatest time for Hindi film music. Some claim the 60s, and some love the RD Burman era of the 70s. Whatever it may be, when it comes to Lata, as far as popular imagination is concerned, her greatest 'hits' happen to be in the 60s. (Of course, it is not logical to divide musical progress by decades. It is not as if when the decade changed, some changes abruptly happen. This is more for our convenience.) Before some of the lovers of 1950s Lata ger angry with me, I want to state that the decade of the 60s has the most number of hits that are still present in the popular imagination. These songs define Lata to even the current generation of music lovers. The music directors, who were initially responsible for providing Lata with hits and guidance, were slowly fadi...

The link to all parts of this series is given here: Series Links In an earlier part of this series, we saw Lata's growth in the initial part of the 50s when she started climbing to the top and by the mid-50s was already the most established voice of Hindi film heroines. She started delivering hit after hit under the baton of almost every music director. She became the most sought-after voice of all: music directors, heroines, producers, and directors. In this part, let us look at some of her major hits from the late 50s.  (I have to put a caveat here. She sang a huge number of songs during the later part of the 50s. So it is almost impossible to list down every hit song. So I will be restricting myself to some songs only. The idea is to show her range and also her work under various music directors.) We will start with beauty from 1956. 'yeh raat bheegi bheegi' from 'Chori Chori.' A composition of Shankar Jaikishen.  Lata leaves her stamp in this song right in the b...

In India, film music has fascinated Classical musicians and vice versa. We have seen many classical musicians get involved in film music. Their involvement is generally as an individual artist. Very rarely do you we have classical musician as music directors for films. Pandit Ravishankar, the sitar maestro, was one such musician who had been a music director for films. He was the man who provided music for Ray's amazing debut film, 'Pather Panchali'. Later Ravishankar was the music director for a Hindi film called, 'Anuradha', starring Balraj Sahni and the lovely Leela Naidu. I remember that he gave music for a film on Meerabai, which starred Hema Malini as Meera. I remember reading a rather lengthy article about this movie in 'Illustrated Weekly of India', which means the movie must have been a late 70s or early 80s one. Contrary to the popular choice of those days, Lata, Ravishankar chose Vani Jayaram to sing all the songs of this movie. Unfortunately I...