Nepali Songs, By Nepali & Indian Artists Options

[Binod]

Teesri Manzil Rafi song Deewana Mujh Sa Nahin was inspired by this Nepali duet of Aruna Lama and Jitendra Bardewa, sung when I was a kid. It was converted from a low resolution RAM file. That is why the sound is not that great. The original song has a much faster tempo than the RDB version.



Aruna Lama & Jitendra Bardewa = Ae Kanchha Malai Sunko Tara Khasai Deona




Hope you enjoy it.

Binod.

[maheshks]

Binod Bhai...I consider Narayan Gopal as the greatest singer of Nepal. Do you want to listen to his songs?

[Binod]

Binod Bhai...I consider Narayan Gopal as the greatest singer of Nepal. Do you want to listen to his songs?

I fully agree with you Mahesh Bhai. Yes I do want to listen to him. Narayan Gopal like Rafi was a very simple and humble man. But unlike Rafi he never cared for his voice. In the good old 1960s during the heydays of the Hippie movement I used to see him smoking 'grass' in the interludes of bhajan sessions in temples at Kathmandu in the night when he would be accompanying other up and coming bhajan singers on the tabla. His control over the voice, his being in 'sur', and his range were simply fantastic despite his careless approach to music. His voice reminded me of a combination of Talat and Hemant Kumar with an incredible range giving it a completely different dimension. The most similar singer to him that I know of in the subcontinent was the Nazrul singer Manabendra Mukherjee/Mukhopadya from West Bengal.

Another great singer that Narayan Gopal eventually replaced is still living -- Prem Dhoj Pradhan. Prem Dhoj has a Rafisque voice. Though the range was not too great, his voice was crystal clear and sometimes sounded even better than Rafi's. Unfortunately, he did not have much control over his voice and sometimes did not sound so 'surila.'[But of course, no one, including even the great Lata, can ever hope to approach the 'surilapan' of Rafi. I remember Lata used to praise Rafi calling him very 'surila.' Now I know why now that I have heard her sing two of Rafi's songs where there are portions of the songs where she is quite flat.]. While both Prem Dhoj and Narayan Gopal composed a lot of their songs, Narayan Gopal got great music composers like Ambar Gurung, Gopal Yonzon, and Nati Kazi do the tune smithing for him. That is why his songs had that much richness and allowed him to soar to such dizzying heights. While occasionally, I do find both Prem Dhoj's and the great Rafi's voice effeminate but no where near as much as Sonu Nigam's, Narayan Gopal's voice has always been manly like Hemant 's or Manabendra's. While Narayan Gopal used the harmonium, Prem Dhoj played the guitar as the accompaniment.

While I was getting money from home to fund the best private tuition in maths in my science college in order to enable me to get into engineering college, I would mostly squander the money in buying expensive tickets to see these artists perform live on the stage. It is a wonder that eventually I did become an engineer against all odds.

I am sure this must be stale news to you and boring but I have attempted to make it interesting by interjecting myself into the story and giving my opinions to give it a personal touch -- not that I am such an interesting person. Nevertheless, I do believe that there are some here in this HF who could be interested such as Prince Ali but did not grow up in the era that I did with Nepali music.

There is a whole galaxy of great male singers in Nepal. Bachu Kailash and Ambar Gurung go at par with the above two. The second tier of good male singers were Deep Shrestha, Prakash Shrestha, Yogesh Baidhya, all of whom towered over Udit Narayan who was just an awe-strucken fledgeling at that time. I have heard Udit sing in a private room without the use of a microphone when I was just married in 1977.

I can talk about such matters in greater detail in future posts if anyone is interested. But again please do exercise some patience since I am extremely busy till mid April. I could also talk about Indian and Pakistani singers who sang Nepali songs and Nepali singers who sang Indian songs later on.

So much for now.

Binod.