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...

Here is the link to read all parts of this series. In this part and the next couple of parts of this series, we will talk about Lata's partnership with famous male singers: Mukesh, Rafi and Kishore. We start with the partnership of Lata and Mukesh. It is very difficult to find two contrasting voices than Lata and Mukesh. Mukesh is a mystery for many people. People accuse him of slipping from the 'sur' sometimes; he is accused of being nasal, and it is well known that his vocal range was limited. He also had the reputation of being suitable only for singing sad songs. Lata's voice was in contrast to that of Mukesh. Her range was incredible, her voice dripped honey, and she could sing any song that the music director threw at her. There is another important contrast between the two. For many music directors, Lata was the first choice. Whereas a lot of music directors were not keen on working with Mukesh, maybe they felt his range was too limited for them. So you don't...

Her is the link to read all parts of this series The 1980s, in my opinion, is when Hindi film music started sliding downwards with respect to quality. The arrival of Amitabh Bachan and the angry young man made the hero the main draw and not the music, unlike the time of Rajesh Khanna, where his romantic image was kept alive by music. Not just this factor, but R D Burman slowly losing his commercial edge, and the emergence of Bappi Lahari and Disco music led to melody taking a back seat. Though there were a lot of 'hit' songs in those times, as they are during any phase, their staying power has been limited.  This was also the time when new female voices started entering the field, and slowly, the need to have Lata in their movies was declining. Lata's voice, too, was undergoing a change, and it was not suited for the disco songs of that era. Asha Bhosle, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, and Anuradha Paudwal got to sing a lot of songs in the decade of 80s. Lata slowly decr...

The link to all parts of this series is given here: Series Links The later part of the 60s is an important transition era for Hindi film music. This is when new music directors started entering the field and making a name for themselves. The earlier music directors were slowly fading away. By the 1970s, this transition would be fully complete, but the seeds were sown in the late 60s. R D Burman, Laxmikanth Pyarelal, and Kalyanji Anandji - the three music directors who would dominate a large part of the 70s - had their initial success during this time. The music, too, started changing, and Lata had to adapt herself to the new music the newcomers were putting up. Of course, the earlier masters still made good music, but the trend change was in the air. Let me initially talk about Lata and Roshan before moving to the other songs of the second half of the 1960s. Like Madanmohan, whose music we heard earlier, Roshan was a genius when at producing great melodies. Lata had great respect for h...

(Khayyam) Tuning for pre-written lyrics was the norm in the olden days of Indian film music. Most of the music directors followed this path, be it Anil Biswas, MadanMohan, Roshan, Khayyam or people like Rajeshwar Rao and K V Mahadevan down south. Ofcoure it was not a hard and fast rule. It is known that most of the songs of Vishwanathan-Ramamurthy and later MSV were written first by the poet, mostly Kannadasan, and were later tuned. There are known instances where the tune has been set first and then Kannadasan writing the lyrics to the tune. Music Directors like K V Mahadevan, if what I hear on various shows is correct, never ever set the tune first. They would always insist on the lyrics first and then the tune would flow. Salilda was one exception of those time, insisting, against the trend, that he tune first and then the lyrics be written. If you observe the way Salilda's tunes twists and turn, you can easily guess that tune would have come first. After Illayaraja appeared on...