Thoughts....

Back in 2006, still in California and with Parents visiting here, we went to watch movie Vivah . You can not go wrong with Sooraj Badjatya when it comes to watching movies with Parents. He graduated himself from bringing Semi-Sweet movie Maine Pyar Kiya to complete Sugary Vivah. Maine Pyar Kiya had some fight sequences which got limited to a Slap on Bindu’s face by Ajit Vachhani in HAHK, but by Vivah, Sooraj completely forgot about physical touch ;).  Vivah tells the story of two individuals and relates their journey from engagement to marriage and aftermath. It all starts with Groom side going to Bride’s place for initial “seeing of Bride”, a very typical Indian culture before marriages. Ravindra Jain created a beautiful song for that whole event, this was like Ravindra Jain’s Homecoming to Rajshri Production. He was their property till the phenomenon of Ram Laxman hit the silver screen through Maine Pyar Kiya, well Ram Laxman is, even though they look like two people in fac...

Raj Kapoor was the first global star India has produced, He was considered the Show Man of the Industry. He would have keen involvement in every aspect of film making, whether it was lyrics or music or art or costumes. He has produced and directed multiple successful movies. One of those was Awara (1951), The movie is listed in the top 100 movies of all time. Such was the success of Awara, that it was later made in Turkey as Avare (1964) People who have seen Raj Kapoor's Classic Awara (1951) would remember that there was a dream sequence in the movie, depicting Heaven and Hell. The entire portion starts with Nargis singing  Tere Bina Aag Yeh Chandni  while in heaven and calling for Raj Kapoor who in Hell singing  Yeh Nahi Hai Yeh Nahi Zindagi, Mujhko Ye Narak Na chahiye, Mujhko Chahiye Bahar . And then Back to Nargis when Raj Kapoor is seen entering the Heaven and Nargis is overjoyed, expressing the emotions with the  Ghar Aaya Mera Pardesi . The entire...

Well extremely sorry for not writing for past week or so, I just got busy. With that being said, I remember my Nanaji (Maternal Grand Father) as he always used to say people who would complain about being busy was that "Even if you guys have more than 24 hours in a day, you will still be busy" So, Point is that Being Busy is just my lame excuse, I may be just lazy to not write down, But enough of that, I stopped on Pancham and will continue with him today. Pancham was accused of Plagiarizing right through his career, He had to defend himself against it, and in most of the interviews he often clarified that inspiration was part of the game in any field of art and his rule was to use one line and recreate an entire song out of the same, and which you can see that most composers did. So How do you differentiate between Inspiration and plagiarism? The answer most likely lies with every individual. Every creative individual will definitely know where inspiration ends a...

So it is Pancham again for today as I have told you before that there are few things which I can keep going on and on, and Pancham is one of them. Pancham for that matter has never been shy to accept his western influence in the music he produced, but I believe that it has become a fashion these days to list out the songs which are claimed to copied by Pancham. Again and Again, I keep on telling the simple thing, songs here can be categorized as Inspired, heavily Inspired or Copied. And copying is completely legal if the due credit has been given to the original composer. If you guys remember the song  Pretty woman  from movie  Kal Ho Naa Ho , Music by Shankar-Ehsan-Loy. Producer of the movie Karan Johar actually worked on international copyright laws and took the permission to even re-work the original from Roy Orbison Oh Pretty Woman , That was a great gesture from KJo and the right thing to do, but then it would be wrong of us if we would claim that song as p...

50's and 60's was the period of melody in Indian Music as the revolution of Pancham was yet to happen. Pancham the able son of much able father revolutionize the Indian music such that he became synonymous to Indian Music. The extent of the experiments he has done with sound is just unparallel. He never hesitated in acknowledging the global inspirations he had for his music. Chronologically I was writing about 50s-60's and I believe, I could still write few more pieces there but I have been getting various requests on putting Pancham's score here, and Pancham being my favorite music director of all time. I thought of taking a break from 50's and 60's and put something on Pancham. The only problem is I can go on and on when it comes down to Pancham, People around me know exactly what I mean to say here. Pancham has been an integral part of my life, there is not a single day in my life where I have not been in touch with Pancham whether it is Pancham from Sho...

Since we stopped at O P Nayyar yesterday, I feel it is him where we should start today, Aar Paar was the first movie under Guru Dutt Production. And it was the first tie-up of  Guru Dutt as a producer with O P Nayyar, the composer. Interesting Trivia about Guru Dutt Productions is that never ever any music director got 3 movies music in a row. Guru Dutt Productions made 7 complete movies and 1 incomplete (Gauri). Out of 7 complete movies as Producer, 3 gained the cult status. Pyaasa , Kaagaz Ke Phool , and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam . Aar-Paar, C. I. D, and Chaudvin Ka Chand were good movies as well. Last movie Baharein Phir Bhi Aayengi was still in making when Guru Dutt passed away. He acted in all those movies except C. I. D which was Devanand and Dharmendra replaced him in Baharein Phir Bhi Aayengi posthumously. Again like I said yesterday you don't get recognized at the moment but much later in time. Of the 3 cult movies Guru Dutt had in his pocket, 2 of them failed m...

Instead of calling it plagiarism, I would say creating music has always been an inspirational pathway ... globalization & its impact much ahead of any era! Very aptly said about the legendary composers of 50's-60's by Pragati (who happens to be my sister-in-law and is an eloquent writer and maintains her writing on this page ) Never was my intention to demean the work of all these legendary composers, And often times you don't even get credit for the work you have done in your lifetime. Remember the now classic song Roz Roz Aankho Tale  by Asha B and Amit K with Gulzar penning down on Pancham's mesmerizing music. The song was released in 1986-87 from movie Jeeva with Baba and Raj Kapoor's Ganga, but become popular in 2000's (much later than Pancham's passing away). There are so many composers, lyricist, singers, actors etc who did not get recognized for what they have done then, but later on, they acquired the cult status. So, Point is maybe the re...

Before I start, I just want to let you all know, Today is Birthday of my Childhood Buddy (Chuddy Buddy) and cousin Ranjan who lives in Auckland NZ,  and his birthday has started there. Happy Birthday Ranjan and this is for you: Movie Yaarana, Music Rajesh Roshan Penned By Anjaan and Sublime voice of Kishore Kumar. Even this movie had a song which was inspired, but that I will talk about that at a later instance. So Now into today's story, during my times at Santa Clara (2006-2007), we used to visit the Flea Market on Berryessa Road in San Jose.  The market was awesome, it reminded me of the typical Mela of India (without the rides though). It had a lot of vendors trying to sell the local stuff like handicraft, toiletries, clothes and produce. The interesting thing there was it use to have live music events going on during evenings. And if there was no live music, then the vendors will have big speakers out of their shops and play music. This flea market has most o...

Ours is filmy family :), We basically eat/drink/sleep on Bollywood movies/music, and it is not just our generation. Both my grandparents were avid movie lovers, So are my parents and Uncles and Aunts. I have heard from my dad that during his days, he would bike for 40kms just to watch the movie, there are so many stories associated with him and his brothers/cousins. One of the incidents which I remember is during my time as an expat in then Bangalore, he visited me. I would go to the office early in the morning and come very late. I was feeling guilty because of it, As I had the opportunity to be with him after 10 years or so for this extended period and I was not able to give him time. So one day I casually asked him about his routine, what surprised me was the answer. He said I go to a movie in the afternoon in the nearby theater. The reason for surprise was not that he went for movies, but in fact, there was no Hindi movie theater nearby. He would go ...

The finding of Tamma Tamma and Jumma Chumma, gave me confidence that there could be more. To further my hunch, I had to go back to the early days. I remembered, sometime in the late 80's; We watched an English movie  Fast Forward because Mandar , my childhood friend and son of current Lok Sabha , the house of commons speaker Sumitra Mahajan told us that Mithun Chakraborty 's Dance Dance is based on this movie. Atul, Aditya and I saw this movie at his house on VCR (yeah, there was no cloud). The movie was very entertaining for those days. For portions of the movie, it was matched scene to scene and around the same time in both movies would come dance sequences. Obviously now hard to believe that there was an English Movie which we watched had Dance Numbers just like Bollywood flicks. So it was an easy inspiration for Babbar Subhash. Anyways when I remembered this incident few more things were coming in my head as realized Bappi Da and Anu Malik were notoriously famous those ...

Back in 1999, while having lunch at a Greek Restaurant in Portland Oregon, I heard a tune which was very closely similar to an old classic Bollywood number. Initially, Because of my ignorance, I thought the owners might be in love with Old Bollywood songs, so Me being Me trying to be friendly started talking about Bollywood Music to the owner. But he was clueless on what I was talking about. I literally said to him the music he is playing is from an old Bollywood movie. With that being said, he looked at me as if I have offended him and said: "You don't know anything about Music". My ego was shattered, I used to consider myself a decent knowledgeable person when it comes to Indian Music. But yes very limited with Rest of the world music. So sheer out of frustration I walked out of the door (without even asking him, what music was he playing). The tune just got into my head and back then there was no Shazam, No Youtube, No Streaming Music. So I just could not figure out ...