Gulzar: The Lyricist, Bharadwaj: The Director

I’ve always associated Vishal Bharadwaj with Gulzar, who gave him his first chance and then collaborated with him with great success. It was interesting to find out that neither wanted to be what they are best known for today: Sampooran Singh Gulzar, the amazing lyricist (adapted from Wikipedia): Bandini marked the debut of Gulzar, who was working [...]

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Suhana Safar to Bichua

Someone posted “Suhana Safar Aur Ye Mausam Haseen” as his status message at facebook. The song is It reminded me of Salil Chowdhury, who used to be my favorite composer for a while … in those days! Chowdhury, perhaps, never got the acclaim of Shankar-Jaikishan, SD Burman, LaxmiPyaare, RD Burman, or even Bappi Lahiri, but [...]

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My daughter's favorite songs

My daughter absolutely loves two things: Taking a book in hand and speaking gibberish, and listening to/watching some songs. Here is a list of some from Bollywood that she listens to and/or watches Gulmohar Gar Tumhara Naam Hota The audio used to be an absolute favorite;  I would sing this when she received her shots [...]

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Attending Indian Classical Music Performances

Anything that I understand about Indian classical music is attributed to my friend, Ashish Deshpande, who has always shown immense patience in understanding and explaining every doubt/query/criticism. A couple of weeks back, I attended Swaraanjali hosted by Indian Classical Music and Dance (ICMD) Group at the University of Michigan. Overall, it was a very nice [...]

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Title track of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in Bollywood music

I like the title song of Jal Bin Machhli Nriya Bin Bijli – a Hindi movie made by V. Shantaram in 1971. The music is by the famous duo of Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Recently, I got the entire soundtrack just to listen to this title song. In this soundtrack, there is a nice solo by Mukesh – [...]

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Plagiarism in Hindi Film Music

For long have we complained about the blatant plagiarism in Hindi Film music by music director’s such as Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri and Jatin Lalit. I think there are worse heartbreakers – Shankar Jaikishen, R.D. Burman, S.D. Burman, Salil Chowdhury, Laxmikant Pyarelal and so on. They never got tagged as “lifters” but lifted some of [...]

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Music library? iTunes? Yahoo! Music engine? Songbird?

For quite some time, I have been using iTunes for all my music needs – buying, listening, ripping my CDs. It is literally my big music library. In the meantime, I tried Yahoo Music engine and Songbird (0.1?). I am impressed with Yahoo music engine and I was impressed with Songbird 0.1 Now, Songbird not [...]

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Percussion in Hindi Film Music

This blog was my first blog at blogspot.. I am just rewriting it —————————————————————- I have Zero knowledge about Indian classical music, and no understanding about beats/rhythms, etc. However, my friend, Ashish Deshpande pointed two things about Hindi film music: 1. A.R. Rahman is amazingly innovative and different when it comes to percussion in any [...]

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