Shair Aur Sargam

(Shailendra) Madh Bhare Nain (1955)

This early album by Burmanda has several good songs. My favorite is Lataji's melodious "Aa Palkon Mein Aa". Here is this and other songs from this film...

Great thank's for this.

dear swarapriya
according to HFGK
song Kaisi hai ye duniya is sung by MEENA KAPOOR not LATAJI
song Rota hai mera dil is sung by Chitalkar & Francis waz
just correction
thanks
taiyab

You're very welcome Dear Devje. Cheers. -S

My Dear Taiyab,

Thank you very much for the suggested corrections. I have made changes to the table to reflect your recommendations.

Thanks again.

Cheers,
S

(Shakeel) Mirza Ghalib (1954)

This film was produced and directed by Sohrab Modi who was famous for making historic epics on a grand scale. “Mirza Ghalib” mostly revolved around the ill-fated love between Ghalib and a courtesan named Chaudhvin. In 1954, the Government of India instituted National Film Awards. “Ghalib” was the first film to win the President’s Medal for the Best Feature Film in Hindi.

Even though the movie received awards and critical praises, I felt it was disappointing. Most of the characters in the film, including the principal ones, were not fully etched. Even the romance between Ghalib and Chaudhvin seemed like one sided affair. Whereas Chaudhvin’s love for Ghalib was burning passion, yet the same thing cannot be said about Ghalib’s response towards her.

Bhushan as Ghalib gave a wooden, expression less, a performance that was void of emotions and was utterly unconvincing as the great poet. That was the major problem with the film. Any poet thrives on emotion. And Ghalib was one of the greatest ever. Yet the emotions, the passion, the love for life just don’t come through from Ghalib’s character as it was depicted in the film. Ulhas, who played the role of the antagonist in the film as Kotwal, had considerable screen time and was too loud and simply unwatchable.

What saved the day for the film was its music by Ghulam Mohammad Saab. There are many beautiful songs in it. Suraiya as Chaudhvin was a spark of the film. Her songs and sweet voice breathed life into the proceedings. I wish there was more of her than others who occupied much of the time in the film.

I am uploading songs and few ghazal snippets that occur throughout the movie in three back-to-back posts. Here is the first set of songs…

Continuing Songs from "Mirza Ghalib (1954)"...

Here are more songs from this fine album...

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Oct 8 2013, 09:17 PM

Concluding Songs from "Mirza Ghalib (1954)"...

Here are some ghazal snippets and more music from this film...

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Oct 8 2013, 09:17 PM

(Anand Bakshi) Sunehri Nagin (1963)

Back in 1954 Kalyanji Virji, along with Ravi, was assistant to the music director of “Nagin”, Hemantda. Both Kalyanji and Ravi later had their own successful stints as independent music directors. Kalyanji started as a solo music director but later had his brother Anandji Virji join him to form the team Kalyanji & Anandji. “Nagin” made been music very famous and its songs are still popular with music lovers. Kalyanji got another opportunity to use the been music, this time with this film “Sunehri Nagin”.

Laxmikant & Pyarelal, another music director duo that were to make their mark in the film music, were assistant music directors for this film. This very same year, 1963, LP made debut as independent directors with a loud bang. Their first film “Parasmani” with every song a chart buster was a phenomenally successful musical album.

Kalyanji & Anandji in their career gave a break to many promising singers. Here they used the singing talent of Kamal Barot in three songs.

Babubhai Mistry, known as a wizard of special effects, directed this listless movie. Helen was the leading lady of the film. I am not sure how many opportunities she had in her career to play the role of a heroine. The movie was shot in both black & white and color. All songs and the last 10 minutes of the film were in color.

I am uploading songs from this film in two back-to-back posts. Here is the first set...

Concluding Songs from "Sunehri Nagin (1963)"...

Here are the rest of the songs from this album...

(Hasrat Jaipuri) Hamlet (1954)

Kishore Sahu was born in a well-to-do family. He graduated with a degree in literature but was fond of writing short stories. He published many of these. His interests in Shakespearean plays and stage led him to land in a role as the leading man opposite Devika Rani in 1937 in “Jeevan Prabhat”. Soon after this debut he formed his own production company and started making films. His sons and daughter also had brief but unsuccessful stints as actors.

He usually wrote stories for his own films. He wrote screenplays, sometimes dialogues, and many times appeared in prominent roles in them. His early work was mostly influenced by Western films. This film “Hamlet”, the first of two movies he was in 1954, the other was “Mayur Pankh”, he played the title role. The movie was based on the famous Shakespearean tragedy. In addition to being the hero of the film, he wrote its screenplay, produced and directed it. The movie itself followed faithfully the play almost one Act to the next. Even the dialogues had strong resemblances to those in the English play.

Sahu was simply brilliant in the title role. He powerfully brought out the troubled and tormented soul of Hamlet who was slowly going mad with consummate command. The movie with many extended scenes of monologues was a bold experiment on his part. I am not sure how well the critics received it. The movie itself did not do well financially.

The movie had only few songs. The chief music director was Ramesh Naidu. Jagmohan Bakshi was the co-music director. Naidu (his picture attached) was born in Andhra Pradesh. At a very young age he ran away from home to Bombay to pursue interest in music. There while working for H.M.V.’s music instruments shop he developed skills to become proficient in several instruments. During this time he met B.R. Chopra. This eventually led him to land as the music director for a Marathi film “Bandval Pahija” in 1947. He was only 14 years at that time. After this he composed music for some Telugu films but later moved to Calcutta. He married a Bengali woman and worked there for many years composing music for films in Bengali, Nepali, and Oriya. In 1972, he made his final move to settle down in Andhra Pradesh. Subsequently he gave music to several Telugu films. His 1983 film “Megha Sandesham” won the National Film Award for Best Music.

Except for one song this is an Asha album. I am also including couple of couplets. For some reason the words in these two couplets were not completely clear to me, especially in the couplet “Main Toh Ek”. I am also including a monologue by Kishore Sahu. This one is an often quoted sentence from Shakespearean plays, “To Be Or Not To Be”. Here are these and other songs from this album…

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Oct 11 2013, 12:44 PM

(Javed Akhtar) Jamai Raja (1990)

This is one of those less inspired music compositions from the usually dependable LP, the music director duo. Akhtar Saab, who seems to write inspired lyrics time and again, came up with very disappointing poetry. It probably has much to do with the razor thin story based on an awful premise that wasted talents of so many people involved with the project.

Here are the songs…

(Majrooh) Kar Bhala (1956)

This is another movie which the comedian-actor Bhagwan Dada produced and directed. I have only three songs from this album. There are at least five missing songs. These are listed in red italics in the table below. If you can, please kindly share these songs with rest of us. Thank you.

Here are the three songs I have...

Both the Krishna Goyal songs are one and the same. Atlib starts with SYAHI BAKHTI....

Viraj

One missing song albeit at a lower bit rate