FIRST POST...YES!

(DISCLAIMER: THE OPINIONS POSTED HERE ARE MINE AND MINE ONLY. I AM NOT PREACHING!)

I am a big fan of old bollywood music. The 1950's, 60's and 70's were the golden period in terms of quality of music, lyrics and rendition. Now I am not a old bollywood music fanatic. I do listen to Western classical music quite often. I also have a few hip-hop preferances, but those are occasional digressions.

Some of the music directors whom I consider equivalent to GODs of music are Madan Mohan, Roshan, S. D. Burman, Jaidev, Ravi, Salil Chowdhury, Shankar-Jaikishan, Hemant Kumar, O. P. Nayyar, Khayyam, C. Ramachandra and Naushad (in no particular order, although I have always preferred the first six). These music directors literally ruled the 1950's and 60's. Though in the 70's, some passed away and other faded. Only old bollywood music aficionados would know that half of these music directors did not learn classical music and yet they could produce semi-classical masterpieces. It was just God's gift. I consider them equivalent to the Western classical masters like Mozart or Brahms or Shostakovich. It's just that these composers took their time (months to years) in creating wonders. On the other hand, the bollywood greats had to create music within days if not hours.

The other amazing thing about this era was that even second-tier (please DON'T comprehend as second-rate!) music directors - N. Dutta, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Kalyanji-Anandji, C. Arjun, Usha Khanna, R. D. Burman, Ghulam Mohammad, to name a few - could create equally brilliant music. I know that some might flame me for putting some reputed music directors in this list, but I am partitioning them according to their quality of music output and talent (and also please read the disclaimer on top).

All the praises and superlatives in the world won't be enough to describe the quality of playback singers - Mohd. Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Manna Dey, Kishore Kumar, Suman Kalyanpur, Mahendra Kapoor, Mukesh and Talat Mahmood. Unlike today's bollywood music, these singers (and music directors) took time to understand the situation of the movie and then delivered almost flawlessly. Each had one in a million voice. And to date I have never found anybody equal to their stature. (Although I did like some of the new crop of singers, but with the serious dearth of good music directors, their talent goes out of the window)

And last but not the least the lyricists. There were many but amazingly each of them was their worth in gold - Majrooh Sultanpuri, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Sahir, Shakeel Badayuni, Rajinder Kishan, Shailendra, Hasrat Jaipuri, Kaifi Azmi, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Naqsh Lyallpuri, - the list goes on. Another interesting thing about these poets/lyricists was that almost all of them had equally good command over (pure) Hindi and Urdu, which always astonishes me (in a good way). Consider the song - Man re tu kahe na dheer dhare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxmLzry8Euo) - which was written by Sahir, who was equally great at writing ghazals and nazms. On a similar note, consider the songs from Jahan Ara (one such example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps3QiXjHi7w) were written almost entirely in Urdu by Rajinder Kishan.

In my ensueing posts, I will try to post lyrics from my favourite songs and hopefully a video/audio link to them. Wherever possible I will try to put forth any additional information that I know of about that song. Aaj ke liye khuda hafiz...