| 33 | Records | ||
‘Society of Indian Record Collectors’ MIDBANNER
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Rajkumari, Shamshad Begum, Khurshid, Suraiya, Noorjehan and Geeta Roy (Dutt) were in the forefront of playback singing before Lata Mangeshkar entered the field, singing a thumri ‘Pa lagoo barjori...’ in the film Aapki Seva Mein (1947) on HMV N 26958. Before this, she had sung with Meenakshi in Badi Maa (1946) and also in one chorus song. Later on, in 1949, she insisted that her name be printed on the record label of the famous song ‘Aayega aanewala...’ from Mahal. So, one can come across two different versions of 78 rpm record of this song - one in which credit is given to Lata Mangeshkar, and the other in which the name Kamini (the name of the character in Mahal) is printed on the record label. Later on, Lata sang in films for over 50 years, and has sung over 5500 Hindi film songs with due credit given to her on each record label. This practice continued for all others singers too who provided playback.
Another playback singer entered the film world in 1948 and that was Asha Bhosle. She sang her first film song in Bhakta Gopal Bhaiyya under the music direction of Shankar Rao Vyas. However, these songs were not cut on gramophone records. She has since then created a world record in playback singing with over 7500 Hindi film songs. The total number of songs sung by Asha, including in all Indian languages, has crossed 10,000! And she still sings with full vigour and spirit. Well-researched and documented books (like Geet Kosh) on Lata and Asha’s Hindi film songs have been published, and these are excellent reference sources for both critics and music lovers.
Thus, in the first 20 years of the ‘Talkie’, sound entered in about 20,000 songs, but around 8000 songs appeared on just about 4000 gramophone records. Majority of the remaining songs are either forgotten or lost to history since the film prints are not available. No one has cared to record these songs on audio formats from the reels rescued, and no archives in the country want to consider this aspect of storing songs that form the integral part of Indian cinema. The gramophone record collectors spread all over India and abroad have been able to obtain only around 1000 records of that era, that are in good and ‘playable’ condition. With the advent of time, they also find it difficult to store, since no one really cares and these collections again would be lost with time. Few months ago, several important nitrate-based film reels got destroyed/burnt in the Pune Film Archives premises and one really does not know what valuables have we lost. Considering these possibilities of unfortunate incidences and accidents, it has become necessary to take care and store these treasures on alternate media and formats like audio and video CDs and MP3s.