I can’t say for certain, but from what I’ve seen, these must be firsts:
First fast-driving train song (and what a perfect train song it is!):
(Thanks to our blogging friend Nivedita for posting that a little whle back.)
First song in which children turn into adults in a couple of beats (a few such song sequences came out a decade or two later, but I think this remained the best):
First song in which a woman sings to her cat (at least two decades before Minoo Mumtaz did it!):
(By the way, I have seen and heard quite a few songs from Street Singer, sometimes quite a few times. But I would love to be able to watch the entire film some day!)
There are some more “firsts” mentioned (such as first Bengali film star, etc.) at the marvelous Kanan… Web site. I think I can say that she is the oldest of my favorite female singing stars right now – my favorite singing star from a time even before my favorite singing star! This past week, I have been greatly enjoying a few MP3s that I donwloaded from that Kanan site’s Audio page. (That site is very rewarding, although there is at least one dead link and there may be some peculiarities – possibly a good idea to look through with a virus detector, though my Norton didn’t pick anything up.)
And over at YouTube, Suhanee11 posted a lot of information about Kanan Devi – including more detailed stuff about the difficult “lower class” beginnings that she had to overcome - right underneath this uplifting duet of Kanan and K.C. Dey:
Toofan mail!
Wow, that brings back memories. I think I saw this song in Chayya Geet of DD in the mid 80s and it struck in my mind.All these years I didn’t have the opportunity to listne to this song!
Thanks for the song!
Which song was sung by Minoo Mumtaz to a cat? In the movie The Black cat?
Thnaks for the link to Kanan Devi’s page.
Didn’t know about her story! Courageous and determined lady! Admirable!
You’re welcome, Harvey… And I’m wishing more and more that I’d had a chance to see that “DD” in years past. :)
Here’s the Minoo Mumtaz song I was thinking about:
‘And I’m wishing more and more that I’d had a chance to see that “DD” in years past. :) ‘
But you know Richard there was just that one Russian-style state sponsered channel. Between programs like Krishi Darshan and the very stern and wooden Salma Sultan I was put off TV forever. From what I recall, Star Trek (started in the 80s I think) was the only good thing along with Chitrahaar (Oliyum oliyum in Chennai) and the weekend movies.
Sophy, I don’t know much about this channel, except that people keep mentioning seeing one or another Golden Age or vintage Bollywood movie or song there, and I keep wishing I had such exposure to such classics 20 years ago.
Here in the U.S., we have a common saying about 200 channels on TV and still nothing to watch. I haven’t turned on my own TV in a long time (and wouldn’t be able to get any channels at this point if I did, because now it needs a special adaptor, and I just couldn’t be bothered getting that). But sometimes I have access to a cable TV with so many channels – say at a friend’s place or at my parents’ house – and the experience always reassures me that I’m not missing much.
By the way, I wonder which Star Trek you’re referring to. The original series, which ran in the ’60s, was a bit hokey sometimes, but it attempted to convey some good social morals (in both senses of the word) and the series as a whole definitely had a heart. I can see why some fans of old Hindi films would find some pleasure in that series. :) Then there was Star Trek: The Next Generation, which came out a couple of decades later (as I recall), and it was still a pretty good show, with some fun characters, but I felt that it just didn’t have quite the charm of the original. Then there were a number of new incarnations or sequel series or prequel series after that, and it was pretty much downhill as far as I could tell. :)
Thanks for the Minoo-cat song, Richard!
O! DD had its charm. In Bombay we had Dnyandeep (light of knowledge), where they used to bludgeon us with wisdom and knowledge. Then there was Amchi mati amchi mansa (our soil, our people), great non-organic farming methods with skits to propagate it!
Children’s programme in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and English, which gave my dad ample opportunity to tell me how talented other kids are!
One Hindi movie on Sunday – our life line!
And a regional language movie on Saturday (mostly Marathi)
And on Thursday Chayya Geet, after mid-80s it was Chitrahaar on Wednesdays.
A big exposure to the history of indian movies came with 1981 (the year we got our first TV set, after 6 months of waiting), which was the golden jubilee year of indian talkies! There were discussions with snippets of old movies and since it was Maharashtra, lots of V Shantaram’s movies. Our whole family was a big fan of his at that time!
Ricard, things came late to India back then they at least and there was a novelty factor to American programs. I remember there was Lucille Ball and Star Trek(the original) on offer in the early 80s. I liked Star Trek because I was a monolingual English speaker, liked science fiction and had already lived abroad and was used to American programs.I moved to the US in 1983 and was greeted by Michael Jackson, Thriller and MTV. TV was fun back then.
[Below is a long tangential comment that I edited a little somewhat after first posting - something that I can do, thankfully, when posting comments to my own blog. :)]
Sophy, it would be interesting to hear how you ended up in these different places and different times and where you’re really from. :) Interesting, but I don’t request that kind of information from anyone unless they feel like giving it.
In 1983, I loved science fiction. In fact, my first intended vocation (back when I had intended vocations) was to be a sicence fiction writer. But I was more into the more experimental “speculative” fiction, much of which is sold as mainstream literary fiction these days. My whole family had watched the original Star Trek back when I was a child and I had some affection for it as well as recognition that it was good for what it was. But I was most interested in the innovative science fiction (and fantasy) of, say, J.G. Ballard and Thomas Disch, and (going a few years further back) Theodore Sturgeon (who actually did write a few Star Trek episodes), as well as fantasy by writers such as Angela Carter.
Concurrently, I was starting to develop a part-time “career” as a pop/rock critic, but mainly focusing on “alternative music.” During my teenage years in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I had been a punk rocker on my way to being (more pertinently) a Goth.
To me, Michael Jackson was, eh… I didn’t hate him the way I’d hated some of the boring mainstream bands of the ’70s, but there were only a couple of songs of his that I could enjoy listening to, and I didn’t get the visual appeal of Thriller much at all (or at least not until much later, when I saw it get creatively reinterpreted by Prahbu Deva).
Though there was an earlier incarnation of Michael Jakcson that I always found to be a little more interesting, which I’d had a chance to hear more than a decade before Thriller, etc., many, many times…. When I was in the second or third grade, back in the late ’60s/early ’70s, my friend Peggy worshipped Michael Jackson and was always playing the Jackson Five on her stereo (or close-and-play record player, as the case may have been). Oh, but that could take me on a whole other tangent! :)
Harvey, you are welcome regarding the Minoo-cat song. Actually, I was told about that one a while ago by Tom Daniel aka Tommydan1, who also included it on his Minoo Mumtaz compilation (which I posted about here). Then later, Bollywooddeewana reminded me of it through a nice, detailed review of the movie, Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan.
Regarding DD, if it exposed you to a bunch of V. Shantaram films, that alone made the station more than worthwhile. Now that I know your whole family was a fan of his, I understand how you’ve been able to comment with so much good information about his films.
As I may have mentioned, I got most of my exposure to V. Shantaram much later, i.e., after I moved to Jackson Heights, NY, started shopping at the Indian DVD stores, and found so many of his films in the three-for-$10 bins. :)
DD was one of its kind!
I loved it during the 80s because it was the only we had and now partly out of nostalgia and partly becuase they were so earnest in all they did!