Music And Movies

Here is the link to read all parts of this series. Kishore Kumar had tremendous respect for Lata and used to call her Lata Didi. They knew each other from the late 40s, having sung together for Kemchand Prakash and Anil Biswas in the late 40s and early 50s. The story of their meeting is funny, and Lata had narrated it in many places. Kishore's trajectory as a singer was quite different from Lata's, even though he had been singing since 1940s. Initially, Kishore Kumar wanted to be an actor. Most music directors of those times saw him as Ashok Kumar's younger brother who wanted to act, and not many saw him as a singer. His lack of formal training in Hindustani classical music was seen as a handicap, and through the 1950s and most part of the 1960s, he ended up singing only for the films he acted in and the films of Dev Anand.  Dada Burman and Dev Anand had a lot of confidence in Kishore's abilities as a singer, but most other music directors preferred Rafi. Also, during t...

(From L to R: RDB, Devanand, Dada and Lyricist Neeraj) My friend Siva's son had hurt his foot badly in a freak accident. I was returning from the hospital and was playing some old Lata numbers in my car. This tape was given to me by Siva long time back for digitization. Suddenly the song, 'tum na jane kis jahan mein ko gaye' started playing. I had plum forgotten this song. In terms of which movie it was from, who was the music director etc. One part of my brain was trying hard to recollect this information while the other part was singing along. The lyrics, the sangathis, the interlude music. Everything was sung in perfect unison (except the pitch ofcourse.) When the charanam started, "maut bi aati nahin", I conituned singing the whole charanam and joined perfectly into the pallavi. The song was embedded deep inside and was not forgotten. I am sure to many people this is not surprising at all. Some song we knew in our childhood and haven't heard for ages sta...

It was early evening and Siva, Murthy and I, as usual, had gone to Gymkhana to listen to some songs. Someone played a song which transported me to my very early school days, transported me to a small lane in Boiguda, a sloping lane, a lane in which all houses had raised platforms. A lane where by 8 o clock all movement would cease and the soanpapdi-wala would ring the bell and bring along the flaky soan papdi in his huge bell shaped glass jar. Did you guess the song which transported me to this lane? Yes, you are wrong!! It was not 'Kanchi Re Kanchi Re' but another song from the same movie, 'phoolon ka taaron ka'. That made me think of 'Hare Rama Hare Krishna' days and automatically to the evening hours of Boiguda. Probably the earliest of my remembrances. I had a neighbour called Roop who was senior to most of us in the street and the unofficial gang leader. His elder brother and friends had a small music troupe which would practice in his house. We would all...