VIJAY KISHORE DUBEY

‘MELODY IS QUEEN,
AND ALWAYS WILL BE’
Vijay Kishore Dubey, who retired two years ago as the vice-president of HMV, has been a witness to the development of music in Hindi films. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of SCREEN,
Dubey relates the milestones in the Hindi film music scene...

I consider myself fortunate to witness the development of the Mumbai film industry and film music at close range, thanks to my association with All India Radio, Radio Ceylon and then, with HMV. I have always been interested in music, right from my childhood and have followed the scene closely.

“The film industry has thrived after sound made its entry in 1931 with Alam Ara. That film had about 20 songs, but no record was released. Some of the best music personalities were engaged by BN Sircar, of New Theatres, Calcutta, like composer RC Boral, KL Saigal, Pankaj Mullick, Pahari Sanyal, Uma Devi, and the blind singer KC Dey. One of the greatest poets Arzoo Lucknowi was employed as song-writer of the company and wrote some great songs.

“The period from 1931-40 witnessed some good films made by New Theatres, Prabhat, Sagar Movietone and Ranjit Movietone. Simulataneously, good films were made under Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani’s Bombay Talkies. In its films Jeevan Naiyya and Achyut Kanya the singing of songs was during the shooting itself. Later on, recording was done in a studio on film, which became the soundtrack. The same songs would be recorded again in HMV studio, because the original lengthy songs couldn’t be accomodated on 78 r.p.m. records. So all the artists and musicians would come again to the studio and record the song, in a shorter version of three minutes.

“Ranjit Movietone had Khurshid as its leading singer. Motilal was the hero of the studio, but he just about managed to sing because actors and actresses at that time had to sing their own songs. Ashok Kumar too managed with great difficulty to sing for Achyut Kanya, which had a female composer Saraswati Devi.

“Since the recording facilty hadn’t been developed then, you had filmmakers recording songs after midnight, at studios where the sets were put up. The late hour was convenient because there was no traffic on the roads and little noise. So while the songs were recorded, there would be no disturbance of vehicular honkings, speeding vehicles or noisy passers-by.

“As the film industry in Bombay grew, people from all over India, who thought they were good musicians, came to Bombay. So you had the best talent concentrated in this city, like Khemchand Prakash from Rajasthan, Anil Biswas from Bengal, Naushad from Lucknow, C Ramachandra from Maharashtra, Master Ghulam Haider from Punjab, Sajjad Hussain, the great mandolin player, who found it challenging to compose difficult songs, and Husnlal and Bhagatram. Later, some more talent drifted into the film industry like Hemant Kumar, Shankar-Jaikishan, SD Burman, OP Nayyar, Shyam Sunder, Madan Mohan, Roshan and Ghulam Mohammed.

“In 1948, Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat and Mehboob Khan’s Andaz opened the market for good music. Barsaat was the biggest break for Lata Mangeshkar, though she had earlier sung hit songs for Mahal. But with Barsaat and Andaz, Lata became a star overnight.

“Punjab too was active in filmmaking. The leading studio in Lahore was Pancholi Studios. Pancholi Arts’ Khazanchi (1941) had superhit music by Ghulam Haider. Shamshad Begum was the main singer of the studio. Both she and Haider later migrated to Bombay.

“In Kolhapur and later Pune, the Prabhat Film Company was going great guns with stalwarts like V. Shantaram, Damle and Fatehlal. They were committed filmmakers and Shantaram made unusual films with a message, and even their songs had a message. The songs in Duniya Na Mane, Aadmi, Padosi and Sant Gyaneshwar were composed by Keshavrao Bhole and Master Krishnarao, and were popular with the people. In Kolhapur, you had Bhalji Pendharkar producing historical and social films which also had good music. Lata Mangeshkar composed music for Pendharkar’s films Mohityanchi Manjula and Maratha Tituka Milwawa.

“The 40s saw the emergence of song-dance sequences gaining importance in films. The films from the South had a lot of song-dance numbers. Reputed studios like Gemini Studios of SS Vasan, AVM Studios of AV Meiyappan, Vijaya-Vauhini Studios of B Nagi Reddi were names to conjure with. They made films which had popular music. SMS Naidu’s Azad had hit music by C. Ramachandra. He had also composed some great melodies for Anarkali. One of the songs for the film was composed as he drove from his house in Dadar to Filmalaya Studios in Andheri, while tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. The songs of Anarkali remained as top hits for five years. Another film which had its songs playing continuously for almost seven years was Ratan, which had music by Naushad. The Barsaat song Ghar aaya mera pardesi composed by Shankar-Jaikishan is still played by marriage bands.

“Though the 40s, 50s and 60s had some of the best composers and singers, there was no cut-throat competition. Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood and Kishore Kumar shared camaraderie. Composers Naushad, Roshan, C Ramachandra would praise each other’s scores, and even helped out one another. If Roshan couldn’t progess with the tune of a song, he would call up Anna (Ramchandra), who would help him to complete the tune.

“The earlier popular female singers were Zohrabai, Shamshad Begum, Amirbai Karnataki and Rajkumari. Singer-actress Noorjehan was reigning, and her song Jawan hai mohabbat from Anmol Ghadi had then swept the entire nation. Another film of hers, Zeenat, had the first all-female qawwali which went Aahen na bhari, shikwe na kiye, which was a rage. Geeta (Roy) Dutt also stood out among female singers for the lilt in her voice.

“According to me, 1950 to 1965 was the golden era of film music. Other big names during this time were S.D Burman, Salil Choudhury, Madan Mohan and OP Nayyar. The Indian music scene had melody in each song because of our culture of classical music. Whereas in the Western music scene, rhythm dominated. With the arrival of the Beatles, the Western music scene changed. They brought freshness and creativity to pop music, and our music directors like OP Nayyar and R.D. Burman were influneced by them. Thus pop entered the Indian music scene. And with that came in synthesiser and orchestration using Western instruments.

“The end of 60s saw deterioration set into music. The pop culture of West had a hand in it. Still we had Kalyanji-Anandji, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Roshan who stuck to Indian music.

“The lyricists in the golden era were literary personalities like Sahir Ludhianvi, Hasrat Jaipuri, Shailendra, Majrooh Sultanpuri and Shakeel Badayuni. Their words oozed poetry.

“Today’s music has a lot of Western influence, yet you’ll notice that only if melody is predominant in a song, it works. A song cannot be a hit in India if it lacks melody.”

As told to Salma Khatib