Hindi Old Songs

As we enter the Diamond Jubilee of the beginning of the Golden Age of Hindi cinema, we look back on the wonderful legacy of the phenomenon of the Indian film industry. I cannot imagine that there exists any person in India or in the families of the vast diaspora in places as far as the Caribbean islands and Fiji who has not heard and enjoyed the melodious compositions from Indian cinema.

The songs continue to fill the air in every Indian city as you walk by the shops in the crowded markets. Even the advent of modern personal entertainment delivered to millions through earbuds has not damped the enjoyment of the music blasted from many roadside stalls. I remember when we woke everyday to the sounds of Radio Ceylon or Vividh Bharati delivering the mandatory morning hit to the millions of addicts. The sounds followed us all day wherever we went, until we returned from our daily toils at work or school and settled down to another dose of the same with the evening programs on the radio. Television has not succeeded in curing us of this addiction. In spite of the power of the visual medium, most of the entertainment delivered through it depends heavily on the musical element. Witness the multitude of musical talent shows in every major Indian language , and the songs written and composed specially for TV dramas.

The tradition of telling a story through song dates back many millennia, not only in India, but in many cultures around the world. The start of the age of cinema in India had a special significance to this art form. It opened up a large market for artists, poets, singers and composers to reach millions. They were no longer confined to a local market and dependent on word of mouth to promote themselves. Major centres of the industry grew up, seemingly overnight, in Chennai (then Madras), Mumbai (then Bombay), and Tollygunge (which yet has not changed its name even though it was named after an English Army officer more than 200 years ago!).

With the exceptions of a few musicals every year, the film industry in other countries developed in a different direction while India's industry not only stayed faithful to the old tradition, but enhanced it to a new art form that was not possible in the smaller local markets. Many more people saw a movie than could attend a local performance at a maidan or sabha, and performances were not limited to special occasions and festival days. This made competition fierce for all artists, and the best and the brightest made a beeline to what we today call Tollywood (Bengali), Kollywood (Tamil), Tollywood (Telugu) or Bollywood (Hindi) and many other havens of the art.

Even though the first Indian full-length movie, Raja Harishchandra, was made in Marathi (it was silent!) a little over a hundred years ago, the Hindi branch of the industry has dominated the scene in sheer numbers. Interestingly, Dadasaheb Phalke, who produced the first movie, bore more than a passing resemblance to Charlie Chaplin, another cinema genius who came much later.

Photo Credit: "Phalke" by Palaviprabhu at the English language Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phalke.jpg#/media/File:Phalke.jpg

Dadasaheb Phalke,
Father of Indian Cinema

Artists, poets and authors were drawn to Bombay, as was the big money. To this day, it holds the spot for the largest film industry in the world.

Aside from the technology that brought these creations to the masses, many factors contributed to the immense popularity of the cinema in India. Of course, the old epics and legends lent many stories to the productions, but many newer stories that made excellent material for the dramas, like Devdas and Laila Majnu, were brought to life. In every instance, songs told the story as eloquently as any dialogue could. Songs composed using the poetry of classic poets of an older era, like Mirza Ghalib, were used, but the modern poets of the day honed their art to write new stories in song.  Producers would seek poets who could portray the dramatic scenes in lyrical form. Expressions of love, devotion, and suffering, all came alive to stay in the memories of viewers long after they had visited the movie theatre. The radio blasted their creations to millions of households and the audience enjoyed re-living the movie they had seen.

Artists, poets and authors were drawn to Bombay, as did the big money. To this day, it holds the spot for the largest film industry in the world.

As the industry blossomed, poets like Sahir Ludhianvi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, and Anand Bakshi, to name only a few, became idols to hordes who had never actually set eyes on them. The same went for singers like Saigal, Rafi, Lata, Mukesh and many more, as well as for composers like Naushad, Ravi and Shankar Jaikishan. The industry produced many more gems, but we will look at them individually in my future blogs.

In my future blogs, we will focus on this one part of this vast industry - Hindi movie songs. The category, of course, includes Urdu, as it would be impossible to separate the two in addressing the influence of this genre on the psyche and culture of India.

In particular, we will publish lyrics of the classics in Hindi, using Devanagari script. For the sake of the fans who are not at home with reading this script, we will also show the lyrics in English. The English alphabet cannot do justice to the nuances of pronunciation in Hindi, but this is something we have to live with. We will assume than our readers would also be listening to the actual songs on websites like Youtube, and get a better feel for the words. For the same reasons, we will also provide a translation in modern English; we expect that to be especially useful to the younger generation and the Indian diaspora living abroad.

The blog title says "Old Hindi Songs", because I am more familiar with them. There was a quality in the songs of the five decades, from the 40's onward, which is rarer in today's offerings. In a future blog, we will also address the evolution aspect of this genre.

I sincerely hope that you will enjoy this adventure with me.

Venkat