washerman's dog: Lata Mangeshkar

Showing posts with label Lata Mangeshkar. Show all posts

Friday, October 5, 2012

Stellar Soundtracks: Aaye Din Bahar Ke

Winter is over for another year. Spring weather has the trees blooming with urgency and temperatures soaring. Yesterday we hit 31 C. Tomorrow it will rain and barely hit a dozen degrees. But the change of season is always a soulful time and so the Washerman’s Dog shares another stellar soundtrack from the Maestros of Mumbai : Aaye Din Bahar Ke (Days of Spring).

Made in 1966 right smack dab in the middle of the Golden Period of Indian popular cinema the film was a hit for the studly action man, Dharmendra and the classy Asha Parekh. The film tells the story of Ravi, (Dharmendra) an eligible bachelor who lives with his mother. The whereabouts of his father are unknown. He meets with beautiful Kanchan (Asha Parekh) and both fall in love. But fate has other plans for them as Ravi soon finds out that Kanchan is already married and has a child.

Filmed in the lush tea fields of West Bengal the mountain scenery provides a fresh atmosphere in more ways than one. Kanchan, of course, at first is not very friendly and Ravi has his work cut out for him but of course, such difficulties only mark an occasion to cavort amongst the tea plantations and beautiful flower beds whilst tugging on Kanchan’s sari!

The playback singers are also at their peak. Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi are at the summit of their popularity, with the latter in particular contributing one of his most powerful performances in Mere Dushman (My Enemies). Lata’s younger sister, Asha Bhosle, was still a few years from breaking out of her sister’s shadow and claiming top spot for herself but the two sing a nice duet in Ai Kaash Kisi Diwane Ko.

The films music was composed by the venerable duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal who not only composed specially for Lata, but had her to thank for their entry into the film music world. She picked them out of an orchestra and recommended them to Naushad, at the time the King of Composer, who gave them places in his own ensemble. The relationship between playback singer and composers remained close throughout their careers with Lata performing their songs more than any other composer/s; she named one of their songs in her personal 10 most favourite. Lata’s solo Suno Sajna, for this film ranks as one of their outstanding contributions to Hindi song.

Lyricist Anand Bakshi it is claimed wrote more than 4500 film songs in his long Bollywood career, most of them for Laxmikant-Pyarelal. With his inclusion, Aaye Din Bahar Ke boasted the A-Team of Bombay music. My favourite song in this soundtrack is the Mohammad Rafi number Mere Dushman. Indian film songs are famous for extolling the ways and attributes of love and the beloved in a thousand different ways. But this song, set in a nightclub, seethes with bitter anger and vengeful longings against the singer’s supposed enemies, including the shocked Kanchan. ‘My enemies, you’re going to long for my friendship/ You who’ve hurt me will long for happiness.’ Every bit as bitter and spiteful as Bob Dylan’s famous put down in Positively 4^th Street. The mighty soaring strings ramp up the emotions to unbelieveable heights, and yet Rafi never loses control, indeed spitting the hurt out with style and even grace! A stunning performance.

Track Listing:

01 Ai Kaash Kisi Diwane Ko

02 Khat Likh De

03 Suno Sajna

04 Ye Kali

05 Mera Mehboob Hai Bemisal

06 Mere Dushman

07 Khudya Khair

here

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Stellar Soundtracks: Love in Tokyo

The earliest Hindi film song to enter my consciousness was Love in Tokyo.

Le gaya dil/gudiya Japan ki

Pagal mujhe kardiya

(That doll of Tokyo stole my heart/She drove me crazy)

I was 9 years old in 1966 when the film by the same name as the song came out. The previous year, 1965, had been a drag. India and Pakistan had fought a second war which India won. But the victory was marred when the Prime Minister, Allahabad’s very own Lal Bahadur Shastri died in Taskent the day after signing the peace agreement with Pakistan. I remember the adults in our compound and house debating whether he had been poisoned by the Russians. I got the impression the adults believed so. Whether or not it was true, a sadness, a shock and a resentment hung in the air for a long time.

Love in Tokyo is a romantic comedy and the title song was an instant hit. It was lighthearted, bouncy and exotic. After all, very few Indian movies were actually shot on location overseas in the early 60s, and Love in Tokyo, we all knew, had been filmed in Japan. The 1964 Olympics had been hosted by Japan and India, like the rest of Asia, basked in the reflected glory of the Land of the Rising Sun. Would India ever scale such giddy heights? It seemed impossible. We were in awe of the accomplishment. Japan, we imagined, must be just as modern, swanky and glitzy as America. Audiences flocked to the cinema to sneak a peek at this amazing country. And the opening scenes that depicted the Olympic stadiums, Ginza, superhighways and women dressed in western skirts, could have been produced by the Japan Tourism Board.

The movie was just what the doctor ordered for a sad, poor and weary country: entertaining distraction for sure, but hopeful aspiration too. Everyone could relate to Mohammad Rafi’s happy lament of being driven mad by a Japanese beauty.

The story starts off in India where Ashok (Joy Mukherji) is being pressured to marry a woman he doesn't love. His elderly mother asks him to travel to Tokyo to pick up his eight year old nephew, a recently orphaned boy named Chikoo whom Ashok has never met because his family disowned his older brother after he married a Japanese woman. Ashok arrives in Tokyo only to discover that Chikoo has no intention of going to India, a country he has never seen before. Ashok hopes to win his nephew over by taking him on an expensive shopping trip, but the boy escapes when his attention is diverted by a beautiful woman named Asha (Asha Parekh), whom he sees performing a traditional Indian dance on television. Asha was also orphaned as a child and raised by her uncle in the Indian community of Tokyo. Asha's uncle wants her to marry a man she despises, a boorish, chain smoking airline pilot named Pran. Asha runs away after she discovers that the two men have cooked up a fiendish plot to get their hands on her sizable inheritance. Chikoo and Asha both end up in the same hiding place and form an alliance against their uncles. Asha protects the boy by posing as a bearded Sikh until she realizes that she has fallen in love with Ashok. She later pretends to be Chikoo's Japanese aunt in order to win Ashok's heart without being discovered. The movie has subplot involving a friend of Ashok's named Mahesh (popular comedian Mehmood) who comes to Tokyo to marry a woman from a higher class. There's a hilarious scene where Mehmood fools his potential father-in-law by posing as an "International Geisha" who just happens to speak Hindi fluently. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157944/plotsummary)

The movie is remembered by many Indian women for the hair clips that Asha Parekh wore. Hereafter, this accessory was referred to as ‘Love in Tokyo’ clips. The Washerman’s Dog, as usual, loves the music. Rafi and Lata share the honours and in addition to the title track both give great performances. In fact, the winsome ballad Aaja Re Aa has to be one Rafi’s finest moments. His voice is a gem and the way he can make it sparkle in so many different ways is a never ending wonder. Aaja is full of tenderness, gentleness and infatuation and is the highlight of the soundtrack.

Track Listing:

01. Love in Tokyo

02. Koi Matwala

03. O Mere Shan e Khuban

04. Mujhe Tum Milgaye

05. Sayonara

06. Mein Tere Pyar Main

07. O Mere Shan e Khuban (reprise)

08. Aaja Re Aa

Listen here

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Mystical Songs of Malwa: Nirgun Singers and Lata Mangeshkar

Meera and Kabir

The western districts of the Indian state Madhya Pradesh are known as Malwa. One of the many ancient kingdoms of India, the Malwa region blends Gujarati, Rajasthani and Marathi culture, language and cuisine into a unique regional tradition.

Indore, a huge industrial and commercial center is the biggest city in Madhya Pradesh but the glory of the region is the ancient capital Ujjain. It was here that India’s greatest monarch, Ashoka, served as governor in his youth and it was in Ujjain that the Homer of India, Kalidasa, wrote his ancient plays and poetry. Ujjain was also where the art of perfumery was perfected and where it is said, they could make perfume that smelt like rain falling on dust.

In contemporary times Malwa is home to some of India’s brightest lights of the arts: Pandit Kumar Gandharva (classical vocalist), Lata Mangeshkar (Queen of Bollywood), Kishore Kumar (Prince of Bollywood), Rahul Dravid (cricket) and Johny Walker (the Bollywood comedy actor, not the whiskey) and M.F. Hussain (India’s greatest contemporary painter).

The region has been ruled by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims and the British at some point and its tribes and local cultures draw upon the bordering regions of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan. A strong folk music tradition exists here in the Vindhya Mountains and their surrounding plains. Within this tradition are the group of singers renown for singing songs of the great bakhti poets, especially Kabir. Collectively known as the Nirgun (the One without Attributes; God) singers, they are led by an amazing singer, Prahlad Tipaniya. A Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’ or Harijan) with no musical tradition in his family, he came across the poetry of Kabir as a young man and has since, in effect, become a disciple of the 15^th century weaver-poet.

Tonight’s first selection is a selection of mystical songs by Malwa’s Nirgun singers. (Prahlad Tipaniya above) This is real folk religious music. Sung with minimal and entirely traditional instrumental accompaniment, the songs are heartfelt, uplifting and enchanting. If you’ve ever travelled for days on an Indian train or through the villages these sounds will be entirely familiar. Devotees singing their hearts out to their God.

The second set highlights India’s nightingale, Lata Mangeshkar, a native of Indore, singing several poems of the mystical woman poet, Meera. A high born daughter of a Rajput chieftain, Meera, was a devotee of Lord Krishna, who is said to have composed more than a thousand bhajans (hymns) during her lifetime. Along with Kabir and Surdas, Meera is regarded as one of the greatest mystical poets of India.

The Rajputana had remained fiercely independent of the Delhi Sultanate, the Islamic regime that otherwise ruled Hindustan after the conquests of Timur. But in the early 16th century AD the central Asian conqueror Babur laid claim to the Sultanate and some Rajputs supported him while others ended their lives in battle with him. Her husband's death in battle (in 1527 AD) was only one of a series of losses Meera experienced in her twenties. She appears to have despaired of loving anything temporal and turned to the eternal, transforming her grief into a passionate spiritual devotion that inspired in her countless songs drenched with separation and longing.

Meera's devotion to Krishna was at first a private thing but at some moment it overflowed into an ecstasy that led her to dance in the streets of the city. Her brother-in-law, the new ruler of Chittorgarh, was Vikramaditya, an ill-natured youth who strongly objected to Meera's fame, her mixing with commoners and carelessness of feminine modesty. There were several attempts to poison her.[2] Her sister-in-law Udabai is said to have spread defamatory gossip.

According to some myths Meera's brother-in-law Vikramaditya, who later became king of Chittor, after Bhojraj's death, tried to harm Meera in many ways like as follows:

▪ The famous one is that he mixed poison in the prasadam or chandanamritam of Krishna and made her drink that. But by God's grace, Krishna changed it to Amrit.

▪ Secondly, he pinned iron nails in Meera's bed, but again by God's grace it turned into rose petals.

Another one is that he put a snake in a flower basket and said her that it's a gift from him to her Lord, but when she opened it it actually became a gift- a garland.

Meera's songs are in a simple form called a pada (verse), a term used for a small spiritual song, usually composed in simple rhythms with a repeating refrain, collected in her Padavali. The extant versions are in a Rajasthani and Braj, a dialect of Hindi spoken in and around Vrindavan (the childhood home of Krishna), sometimes mixed with Rajasthani.

(Wikipedia)

Lata’s interpretation of these bhajans is, as expected, polished, as all things surrounding Bollywood royalty are wont to be. But that doesn’t detract from there austere beauty and it is always great to see playback singers doing things that have nothing to do with their day jobs. Lata’s voice is gorgeous and it rises and lifts beautifully to the spiritual heights (and depths) of the occasion.