“Discovering” Neha Bhasin (especially when she sings old, classic songs)

As readers of this blog might guess, my knowledge of contemporary singers in the Bollywood industry is relatively limited. Once we get into the periods when the Golden Age greats no longer dominate (and very much beyond the time of my Vintage favorites), my knowledge is probably more limited than that of most Bollywood/film fans (especially those who actually live somewhere in India, rather than in New York). But once in a while, I do stumble upon someone who does contemporary work in Bollywood whom I really like – thanks mostly to YouTube – and then I make it my mission to learn more about what that person has done.

One contemporary singer whom I was really taken with this month is Neha Bhasin. But I did not get drawn to her because of her film work (though I do certainly like a couple of her film songs that I have checked out) nor for her more pop-oriented music from several years ago. Instead, I was drawn in by her performances of old classics, including a few Punjabi folk songs. And I usually like the performances that are “unplugged” or at least done in a basic way, without elaborate production. So, maybe it is cheating to say that I have found a favorite new singer of contemporary Bollywood music since I like her most when she performs old, classic songs (most of which I have seen and heard before in very old renditions by other singers).

In any event, getting to the point now, here are a few examples of the kinds of performances by Neha Bhasin that I like most:

This first video is actually pretty nicely produced and well directed, and per the description on YouTube, a short part of it did appear in a film, Veer Zaara (which a little research tells me would have to be the 2018 remake of the 2004 film). The director of the Video is Sameer Uddin, who also did the musical arrangements; he also would become her husband about a year after this video came out. And Sameer Uddin is obviously her main music guy in most of the videos that I’m including here (a very convenient arrangement!).

This rendition, like all the ones she does, is maybe a little westernized and modernized compared to the classic originals, but it is distinctly recognizable as a classic Punjabi song. (Her voice may also seem more contemporary than the classic Punjabi/Indian voices, but it still suits the old folk songs well; it is both full and sweet.)

In this particular song, I hear more of a jazzy quality than in her other covers, too, so the arrangement might be slightly more complicated than most, but it is still easy for the ears to follow. (Incidentally, the instrumentation becomes very interesting – I really like that dulcimer, which is credited to Chandrakanth Lakshpati.) The video is also quite fascinating – I love the pigeon scenes! And on YouTube, within the comments, you can find a translation of the Punjabi lyrics. (They are vivid and sometimes sweet, but sad and a bit troubling, starting with the lines: “A cob of millet, quite effortlessly, oh yes, I can twist and grind it between my palms/ My lover, angry and out in the street, oh yes, I made him return by using my charms!”)

This next song is a pretty familiar Punjabi folk song. I did not find a translation, but I did not look that much, because it hardly matters when the music is so charming.

Incidentally, I tried sharing this the other day with a fellow New Yorker who is not familiar with Punjabi music (or any Indian folk music) and he said it sounded good but he had “obstacles” to enjoying it fully because of his unfamiliarity with the language. That seems so strange to me! I mean, certainly, sometimes you can enjoy the song more when you can understand the poetry, but I cannot imagine lack in understanding of the language as being an obstacle to enjoying a vocal performance and music! 

Anyway, once again, all musical arrangements here were done by Sameer Uddin, who I imagine does at least some of the playing of string instruments (we’ll see his nice guitar work more clearly in the next video). I believe this was made a few months earlier than the other one, so it would be over a year before their marriage, but they are already so musically well matched! By the way, I have heard the much older version of this song by Surinder Kaur, and this is obviously more modern, a bit more Western, too, etc., but the arrangement is pretty basic, and I imagine most will find that the integrity of the folk music is very much left intact. Once again, I appreciate the visuals in the video, too. It is very pleasant how the camera follows Neha on her bike ride through this neighborhood. (And if anyone could identify the neighborhood, please tell me, because I am curious. I am guessing that it is in Neha’s hometown, Delhi.) Almost needless to say, Neha is also quite nice to watch here as well as to hear!

My next favorite Neha Bhasin video is one of a couple of “unplugged” videos that I watched, from 2018. This video is very simple, with Sameer accompanying Neha with his guitar alone. It is literally filmed in their living room, and it could have fit in very well with some “lockdown” set, but, of course, it’s not that recent. Still, when they did this, Neha and Sameer were already a couple of years into their marriage, and the two seem very charming and happy together. (Though off screen, one never knows! I hope there isn’t any “Bajre Da Sita” kind of stuff going on between them – just kidding there.) 

The song that Neha and Sameer cover in this video is a pretty familiar Punjabi folk number, too. I know that this song was performed very nicely decades ago by the Pakistani singer Musarrat Nazir. It’s one of those wedding folk songs that I just cannot imagine anyone not liking!

When I watched Neha and Sameer in these “living room” performances, it reminded me a bit of seeing another couple performing together, the New York couple that consists of the the Indian-Canadian-American singer Kiran Ahluwalia and her Pakistani-American guitarist husband Rez Abbasi. I am thinking, particularly, of their livestream from just a month ago, which actually was a lockdown performance. Kiran Ahluwalia  sings some Punjabi folk, too  (among other things), since that’s where her roots are. But Rez Abbasi’s guitar playing is very jazzy and he is known for delving into African rhythms, etc., so the Neha/Sameer performance is much closer to the traditional Punjabi folk (Western/modern aspects notwithstanding). And I admit, I can get into the mood for Neha and Sameer more easily, much as I like the other couple, too (and even though I have listened to Kiran Ahluwalia for quite a few years).

Also, from those Neha/Sameer “living room” sessions, here is the song where I first noticed Neha. It is not a Punjabi folk song but, rather, an Urdu film song. (Though the woman who originally made this song famous certainly knew Punjabi too!) Maybe I would not have gotten so curious about Neha if I had not seen her do a cover of an old Noor Jehan film song! Needless to say, I was very pleased to see her rendition of “Chandni Raatein.” It is quite charming, and it is always a major pleasure for me to see someone perform this song well.

And now, to close my post on Neha, maybe it would be fair to include an actual  film scene, since I imagine she is best known for her film songs (or at the very least, best paid). I’ll provide this scene from the 2016 Hindi film Sultan, because I really did enjoy her singing performance here, and, obviously, I’m not the only one, considering that this film earned her a Filmfare award. She sings for Anushka Sharma, and it’s a nice combination, though strangely enough, when I watched this, I missed seeing Neha Bhasin.

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P.S. While I have posted those five clips of Neha Bhasin because they caught my attention and I am happy to share them above others, this doesn’t mean that they are necessarily her best songs or that this is a definitive sample. Everybody who is curious about her music should explore more, starting with her YouTube channel (where most of the videos above come from, of course). In addition to seeing more Hindi and Punjabi songs, you can check out the ones that she did in Tamil and Telugu. (She has won awards for a few South Indian film songs.) 

One reason that I picked the particular songs that I did is, exactly, because they were recognizable old classics, and I had fun linking to some very old versions too. I still do love the very old stuff that I have been blogging about for so many years! 

Quarantine Qawwali

Admittedly, part of the reason for this post is the fun in the title, itself. Can you think of a word describing a kind of music or performance that would go better with the title word “Quarantine” than “Qawwali”? (Of course, I was not the first one to come up with this word combination – which will become evident shortly – but I am surprised that more people didn’t think of it.)

I also love all kinds of music that could loosely be called “qawwali.” And I will use the term loosely here, as did most of the performers in these videos. By “qawwali,” I mean a performance that includes qawwali style in some way, that fits with North Indian/Pakistani traditions (generally with Sufi origins, too), and, usually, that involves poetry which has been used in qawwali before.

Actually, the qawwal who first gave me the idea to do a post about “Quarantine Qawwalis” was Tahir Qawwal, whom I have known about as the lead singer and co-founder of the great Fanna-Fi-Allah. In this clip that he labeled “Qawwali in Quarantine” (a slightly more exact label than the title I’m using), he does a long-distance instrumental duet with Yama Sarshar. On YouTube, under the video, it says, “Yama Sarshar is an Afghani tabla nawaz living in Holland & Tahir Qawwal is a Canadian Qawwal living in Indonesia, playing together while in quarantine.” Above that line, it says, “Qawwali sazina across boarders!” I am not sure if the use of the word “boarders” here is a misspelling or if it’s a deliberate pun (because they are both staying in places away from their homes?). I am also not sure, sometimes, when I hear Tahir get this lively on the harmonium, whether it is really qawwali or just rock’n’roll. But it rocks in any event.

For the next selection, here’s a Khusro-penned Sufi Kalam from Pooja Gaitonde. If I might say so, quarantine must be doing her well at this stage, because she looks and sounds wonderful! I have watched clips of Pooja Gaitonde with full bands, orchestras, etc., but I most appreciate seeing and hearing her doing a simple performance, singing while playing an instrument, especially if it’s the harmonium. I also really like the simple, homey-looking visual setup of this video clip – with her sitting on that rug in the middle of the floor; the color coordination of her surroundings is really nice, too!

And because I like these solo performances by Pooja Gaitonde so much, I am actually going to include another one! This clip is a little more flashy and a little less homey. It is more clearly a small studio set up somewhere – possibly in her home (though I am not certain). But her performance here also consists, simply, of Pooja and her harmonium (though with visible big mike this time). One reason that I wanted include this clip (in addition to the fact that one Pooja Gaitonde video is never enough) is that it is a performance of the song “Rang” – the famous Kalam about color. . . and welcoming the loved one home, getting into all that multiple-meaning Sufi stuff about the “beloved.” 

The next video, from Abi Sampa, is also a performance of “Rang,” but it is an entirely different sort of production, making for a nice contrast. This is the other kind of quarantine video, in which multiple performers are put together through technology, and it is pretty technically polished, too. But in case we might have any doubts that this is a true quarantine video, we are actually informed about that at the beginning with a caption that reads, “Filmed in isolation/During the coronavirus pandemic”! So, I am not going to have any doubts about whether this one should qualify, especially since I like it a lot, too.

Apparently, Abi Sampa is somewhat well known, also (though I did not know about her before I saw this video). She initially made her performance breakthrough on the UK version of the TV show known as The Voice, which led her to leave her profession as a dentist(!) to pursue her music full-time. From a brief search that I did, I can see that she used to do covers of western pop songs before moving on to qawwali (among other things). But she does do her qawwalis in a westernized kind of way (as do most of the people I have found for this post), and here, she even includes a guitar and cello. (Below the video, the cello is credited to Lydia Alonso. It doesn’t say who the guitarist is (though it credits (other) “vocals” to Amrit Dhuffer and Rushil Ranjan), but I am pretty sure it’s Puru Kaushik, whom I glimpsed playing guitar with her in other videos.)

This video also contains a very nice dance by Vidya Patel, so even though this is a non-dance post, it gives me the opportunity to sneak in a dance anyway. Considering that in addition to everything else, how could I resist posting this?

One more bonus that I should mention is that in the description below the video on YouTube, we are even treated to spelled out lyrics, with an English translation. I have seen a few translated versions of this poem, and I think that the lyrics in Pooja Gaitonde’s version might include more of the original Kalam. So, I am not going to single out the lyrics of Abi Sampa’s version to post here, but I do recommend having a look at them on YouTube.

Now, going to the completely opposite side of the production spectrum, I appreciated this minimal video by Vijayan Almeida. As far as “quarantine” videos go, you can’t get more locked-down looking than this! (I especially appreciated the cramped and dilapidated appearance of the room that he is in, which adds a certain kind of authenticity.) I don’t know much about Vijayan Almeida (and I doubt that many other people do, either), except that he lives in Goa and he is the singer and guitarist for a rock band called Kixmet. But I think he definitely has some talents; I was charmed by his unique presentation of this song. In fact, I’d like to count this among my favorite contemporary versions of “Hum Dekhenge,” adding to the list that I posted in February.

Moving back to the more polished kind of video, I’ll close here with this performance of “Sanson Ki Mala” by the Leo Twins (that is, Haroon and Sharoon Leo). One reason I’m glad to add this one is that I haven’t included any other videos yet that show the artists visibly using a loop station. (Abi Sampa displays her loop station skills in another video, but it isn’t related to qawwali. I have also greatly appreciated the detailed “live looping” videos by the pop singer Vasuda Sharma. I have posted a couple of her covers of old Hindi film songs in this blog, but nothing that exhibits her looping skills. I won’t link to any here – since they are also pretty off-topic for this post – but I strongly recommend a search for those, and I might post some of them in the future.)

As indicated here by the video title, though, the Leo Twins wanted to highlight the use of the violin. With this combination of guitar and violin (and tablas playing throughout also because – as they showed us at the beginning – they have looped them), the instrumentation is a bit like what we saw in Abi Sampa’s cover. But this is strictly an instrumental, and I can’t help feeling that with these particular instruments but without emotive vocals, it seems a little too much like “New Age” music or something in the realm of easy listening (even though the violin does get a bit lively at some point). When I think of this song, not only do I think of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan‘s version, but also – or maybe especially – the film version sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy for Madhuri Dixit. Can I get used to this mellower-seeming version that doesn’t even have any vocals in it? I am not sure, but, on the other hand, judging by comments to this one (as well as the view count), it is clear that other people have greatly appreciated it. So… Maybe it will grow on me. (I should add, by the way, that the Leo Twins have earned a very good reputation, too, mostly via their appearances on the Pakistani show known as Nescafe Basement.) 

I suppose this post is more limited than I would have liked it to be. (There are six videos just as with the lockdown dances post, but this time I have included two by the same person.) I would have liked to find more, but the other selections that I looked at either seemed a bit too far from genuine qawwali (even by my loose standards here) or didn’t at all seem to fit within the guidelines of social distancing to combat the coronavirus (which we would certainly want in “Quarantine Qawwali”). For instance, a bunch of guys sitting together in close, cramped-looking fashion just won’t do! (Maybe it’s acceptable if they all are literally brothers or siblings who are stuck under one big roof and not interacting with anyone outside, but I doubt that was the case in any videos that I glimpsed.) On the other hand, it does seem that the qawwali, especially in its traditional form, usually should consist of people in a group cramped together, with one or several among them belting out vocals in a loud and passionate way that is bound send droplets of spit onto other group members’ faces. So, a socially distanced qawwali must automatically seem unnatural. But, then, so do other things that are being affected by social distancing. And I hope as much as anyone that soon we will be able to look at all such unnatural-seeming disruptions as an unfortunate but relatively brief moment in history.  

“Quarantine” or “Lockdown” Dances (in other words, more dances in people’s homes)

Longtime readers of this blog know that I like to watch and share no-frills performances that people do in their own homes. I’ve shown such clips in a number of posts, but the one that best displayed my fondness for this sort of thing was Another Mujra in a Different Kitchen. Although it’s been more than three years since I wrote that post, I always knew that I would return with another post containing at least a handful of performances in people’s homes; I just needed the right circumstances to inspire me – or at least to give me an excuse. And now I have found those circumstances because, suddenly, people are posting home-based performances from all over the world.

It is horrible that because of he coronavirus pandemic, nobody feels safe doing public performances right now and nobody would feel safe going to them. (Admittedly, it’s far from the worst of the many horrors that we are experiencing, but it is horrible nonetheless.) Additionally, people are trying to stay in their houses or apartments, removed from the dangers of contagion, as much as they possibly can. It is amusing, though, that these awful circumstances have helped to make videos of home-based performances very trendy in a new way, as long as the performances can be labeled “quarantine” or “lockdown.”

Most of the clips in this post have been labeled “quarantine” or “lockdown” by the people who made them, though, actually, not all of them have. And most of them have nothing to do with pandemic in their content (though there is at least one that certainly does). Nonetheless, I like to think that these videos fit well together in this post. And, completely apart from the issue of lockdowns and quarantines, I am glad that I finally have posted a sequel to that post from a few years ago.

For my first clip here, I am including a dance that was actually created to address the pandemic. This video does not take place in a very modest home environment, and if it is done in a home, it is looks as though it is a special dance studio within that home. Nonetheless, it is labeled as a quarantine dance, and nothing could be more appropriate as a video to open a post even remotely related to quarantines and anti-pandemic lockdowns.

Quoting from the text below the video:

“This is an attempt at conceptualizing our battle against Corona Virus through dance with a foreword by K. K. Shailaja[,] teacher, Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Government of Kerala. Dr.Methil Devika (Dance and Music Concept/ Choreography/ Performance/ Musical Arrangement).”

This is part of the government of Kerala’s Break the Chain campaign, which put out many videos to build up awareness about how to protect against the coronavirus. (Incidentally, the government of Kerala has gotten a very good reputation for the way it’s handled the pandemic. I don’t think as much could be said regarding the rest of India or, especially, my own town, New York City, U.S.A.) There are other dance videos in the series as well as music videos and small comedies and dramas, but I found this one to be the most aesthetically pleasing among the bunch that I watched. For one thing, this dance goes a bit further beyond the purpose of literal instruction than the other videos do. For instance, the song here begins with lines from an 18th century poem, and the coronavirus is “personified” as a classic demon. (You will see more about that as you watch the video, since there is a very nice explanation written in English, along with English subtitles.) The Mohinyattam dance, itself, is also quite beautiful to watch, which is not surprising, since it is performed by Methil Devika, a somewhat renowned dancer and dance scholar.

Continuing with the demon-slaying theme, I liked stumbling upon this semi-classical dance by Subhashree, performed to a song about Aigiri Nandi,. (By the way, I did not immediately recognize the subject of this song – or, rather, the story behind it – though I might have known it at some time. So I did a quick check in the definitions in Google, which told me that “it is about Goddess Parvathi in her Durga avatar, where she kills the demon Mahishasur.”) I don’t know anything about this dancer, but I assume that she must have some experience as a dance teacher, since her channel title is “Dance Odissi With Subhashree” and her “About” section says, “This channel is designed to teach you Indian traditional and Semi classical dances.” I also am not completely sure that this is supposed to be a “lockdown” or “quarantine” video, because I have not seen any mention of that in the description. But the video was made just a few days ago, and it definitely looks as though it was made in her home. And it certainly is a good follow-up to the first video here! Let Mahishasur also be a personification of the virus!

Moving into an entirely different direction, here’s the video that stars the most famous person you will find in this post. That dancer dressed in blue is Janhvi Kapoor, daughter of Boni Kapoor and the very-much-missed Sridevi. I understand that Janhvi has started to acquire some well-regarded film credits of her own, too.

The second dancer in this video is apparently Janhvi’s choreographer and teacher/trainer, Charvi Bhardwaj. (By the way, this is information that I am adding a week after this post first went up. See the comments section if you are curious about the discussions that finally led to this conclusion.)

The physical environment for this dance is also little more fancy than the kind that I generally want to feature in this sort of post, and even though there is a couch here, I wonder if, as in the first video, we are looking at some sort of dance studio built into an elaborate home. Nonetheless, it is very clearly an at-home production, also specified as a dance done during quarantine. And it is very nice.

There are other, longer dance clips on YouTube that are obviously from the same session, but I found this one-minute performance to be the nicest. Maybe part of the reason for that is the song that they’ve chosen, an old one that was danced to by Waheeda Rehman in 1965, in Guide.

The next dance is done in more of the modest kind of environment that I think about when I want to watch dances in people’s homes. (It’s a nice little room – attractive drapes and windows and a decent-looking couch.) I also always enjoy Kathak “pure” dance segments involving rhythms and footwork and I found this one to be quite charming and good. (It would have been nice if we had gotten better camera angles so that we could see the feet more during the footwork, but since this is obviously a no-frills video without professional production, I would not expect perfection in that area here.)

While the dancer, Pooja Tiwari, is obviously not a famous film dancer, she does have some professional dance experience, which includes teaching, dancing on TV shows, and doing choreography. She is also actually a resident of the U.S., having moved to Quincy, Massachusetts back in 2009. And by the way, if you are wondering how I know all this, it’s because I read the About page on her website.

I felt that I should not put together this post without including at least one Bharatanatyam video, so I am glad I found the one that follows. I also am pleased that I found a dance in a small, modest room that is so well put together. I like the combination of colors, the furniture arrangement and, here too, the drapes! Plus, the dance is certainly nice to watch. I do not know anything about this dancer, Shivani Mhatre, except, looking at another video of hers on YouTube, I see that she danced in a performance at Thakur Polytechnic. (That one is dated March 27, though it must be from sometime farther back – unless these students got to get a dance performance in right before the lockdown started.) I hope that we will get to see many more dances from her in the future.

When we’re looking for stay-at-home videos or “quarantine”/”lockdown” videos, rooftops are just as legitimate as any other environment, and sometimes they make for the nicest setting in the modest vein. I’ve posted some rooftop videos before, but this is the first time that I have found – and am posting – a nighttime rooftop silhouette clip. This is certainly a different approach, and I do like it. I have seen this technique used in a few vintage films, but I do not recall ever seeing this done in a simple video filmed on top of someone’s home! And since it is labeled a “quarantine video,” I might add that among the “quarantine videos,” this one’s particularly unique. The dancer, Arpita Verma, is pretty good, too. I don’t know anything about her, except that she’s a choreographer as well as a dancer and has posted a few good dances on YouTube. The song is not so unique, since it’s another one of those popular film songs from the past couple of decades that a lot of people like to refer to. (I have never seen My Name Is Khan, which came out in 2010. I suppose I should sometime.) But it’s not a bad song, either.

And I will conclude here, having posted the same number of videos that I did the last time I put up this kind of post. (Actually, in the last one, I added one more video slightly later as a P.S. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing that here as well.) I hope that at least some people enjoy this kind of post, because I am thinking about doing this more often, creating a series of sorts. At the very least, I hope that some people found this to be a pleasant distraction, especially considering that under the present circumstances, we all can use as many pleasant distractions as we can find.

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P.S. One of these days when I do another of these posts, I’ll find a way to include a male dancer or two. I just haven’t found any home-based clips with male dancers that I liked enough, especially not in the classical or semi-classical genres, which is where I am keeping the focus here. (I saw a couple of “lockdown” clips starring guys who were pretty good dancers, but they were doing a more modern and free-form kind of thing.) I will keep an eye out, though.

Looking Back at My Old Review of Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani

It’s been ten almost ten years since I wrote my review of V. Shantaram’s classic 1946 film Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani. I have thought about it recently because it is a film about a doctor who goes to China to help cure a plague, and now I am sitting in the middle of a world being menaced by a plague that started in China. This plague that started in China originated in Wuhan, the same town where Dr. Kotnis, himself, first landed – by which I mean, the real Dr. Kotnis whom the hero is based on, Dawarkanath Kotnis. That’s a curious coincidence, but that’s not the real reason that I began to think about this film again. The real reason is that it’s comforting to think about a heroic doctor who succeeded in curing a plague.

The pandemic of the novel coronavirus that we are now facing in 2020 and the consequences that have resulted so far are like nothing I have seen in my lifetime. In fact, as I watch the events unfold in my place in New York City, U.S.A. – including the cancellation of all public gatherings, the closing of schools, libraries, and cinemas, the closing of all bars and banning of all dining in restaurants (takeout only now), as well as the extreme measures of more personal “social distancing” being advised everywhere – it feels as though I am in the middle of a nightmare. I don’t think it’s possible to find a film that would be adequate in helping us to reflect upon and deal with the horror that we are all currently facing. But Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani is a nice film to watch if you have doctors and plagues on the mind and also would like to escape into a heartwarming tale that is based on some real hardships that many people struggled with in a certain place decades ago. And wherever you may be – India, the U.S., China, Italy, etc. – you can also dream about the arrival of a heroic doctor who’s going to cure this plague even if it means sacrificing his own life to do so.

Additionally, since I don’t have the energy or much spirit to write a brand new review (or compile a new list) anyway, why not return to an old one that I would like people to see again? It’s hard to believe that I wrote this old review all the way back in June of 2010, but it seems to have held up pretty well. Actually, it wasn’t holding up that well in a sense, because all the clips had disappeared. It is a good thing that I decided to look back at that old review recently, because I did not know that all the videos had been dropped, but once I found that out, I was able to replace them quickly.

So please click the title below and take a look at my old review, if you like. Maybe you have read it before, but it has been quite a while, right? Or maybe you have not seen it yet and might find it interesting (I hope):

Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946)

Oh, and by the way, you can also find a couple of copies of this film on YouTube, but I’m not going to recommend a particular one, because neither of the copies that I found are in very good condition, so they are a little difficult to watch. And unfortunately, they do not have English subtitles, either. (I watched an old English-subtitled copy a decade ago, but who knows where it is now? I have seen this film in the New York Public library more recently and if anybody in New York is reading this, I would recommend looking for it there, but unfortunately, the library is going to be closed at least until the end of the month and probably for longer than that.)

Returning to “Hum Dekhenge” (and a Happy Upcoming Birthday to Faiz Ahmed Faiz!)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted “Hum Dekhenge,” the great song that came from a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The first time I did this was in a post on November 20, 2009, For the 25th Death Anniversary of the Great Poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The post included a couple of different clips of Noor Jehan singing “Mujh Se Pehli Si Muhabbat,” and two clips later – after a now-missing clip that I can’t identify – I had posted a performance of “Hum Dekhenge.” That clip disappeared also, but I’m certain it had to be a performance by Iqbal Bano. I am certain not only because Iqbal Bano sang the original, classic version of the poem-turned-song, but also because of the parallel between Noor Jehan’s performance and Iqbal Bano’s: Noor Jehan performed “Mujh Se Pehli Si Muhabbat” in defiance of a ban of Faiz by one military ruler of Pakistan – Muhammad Ayub Khan – and Iqbal Bano performed “Hum Dkehenge” in defiance of a ban by another – the notorious Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (commonly referred to as Zia). But “Hum Dekhenge” is also different in that it was written specifically as a protest against Zia, and this is the song that would live on as an anthem of rebellion and revolution.

While I have never been able to understand “Hum Dekhenge” simply from listening to the song in Urdu (outside of a word here and there), I have always appreciated the lyrics that I have seen in English translation. (By the way, I am going to supply a text of the words translated into English at the end of this post, originally taken from Ghazala’s Weblog. There is another translation in the old post, but I thought it better not to copy that here since the original source has been dropped. There will also be subtitles for all or part of the song in some of the clips that I’m including below.)

I’ve read a few analyses about the meanings of the lyrics, but I don’t think I needed an outside analysis (after reading any English translation) to understand what this poem is about – that is, toppling dictators and freeing the people from tyranny so that they can all have a say in how their own world is run. Faiz, who was a committed revolutionary socialist, could not have written this poem to uphold any particular religion against another.

So, if anyone had said to me that this song was “anti-Hindu,” it would not have made sense to me.

But as many people know, people in the ruling right wing of India have said just that. (Actually, it started with a complaint by a faculty member at the Inidian Institute of Technology in Kanpur – which is still “investigating,” so I understand.) They said this in response to the fact that the song was being sung at protests against actions by the right-wing government. (Specifically, as I think most people reading this would already know, the protests sprung up in response to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, though the causes of these protests and their ultimate purpose extend far beyond that.)

My last post on this blog, Oh, What A World, was a reflection on the rise of authoritarianism and bigotry and a general social regression that was taking place. My thoughts about the rise of right-wing and authoritarian governments could be applied to a few countries, including my home, the U.S.A. But this is a blog about Indian films, music, and dance, and the rise of the right wing in India is also, as I see it, particularly extreme and disturbing. On the other hand, as I mentioned in my last post, I have seen hope in the current resistance, too.

A week or two after I put up that last post, I was pleased to find a post on Bollyviewer’s Masala Punch, Hum leke rahenge azadi – India Awakens, in which she uses protest songs from classic Hindi films to reflect upon and celebrate the protests of the present. I was quite happy to see this post, and if you go there, you’ll find that in comments, I added a few songs, myself (as did a few other people). Of course, I also noticed that right at the beginning of the post, Bollyviewer mentioned “Hum Dekhenge.” I mentioned in my comments that I was contemplating doing a post of different versions of that song, and so, now I am following through. It did take me a little while to follow through, but that might be a good thing, because I can combine that idea with another that I had, to do something in honor of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s 109th birth anniversary, which is coming up on February 13.

So, in honor of Faiz’s birthday as well as in recognition of this great poem turned into a great song that has been used in these much-needed protests during the past couple of months…

1. Let’s start with that version by Iqbal Bano. This is the classic that everyone should see and hear first! In the old post, I am going to replace the old performance clip that I had used, but here, I’m posting a clip that provides a little more: It’s a good chunk of Iqbal Bano’s performance containing some English subtitles as well as an excellent printed summary (also in English) of her battle with Zia, the courageous risks that she took, and the “banishment from public life and public performance” that she subsequently endured.

2. The second time that I posted “Hum Dekhenge” on this blog, it was a clip in my post from April 5, 2011, Three Fine Performances of Faiz by A Beautiful Contemporary Pakistani Singer Named Tina Sani. Tina Sani is known for her performances of songs based on Faiz’s poems, and for good reason. I have been a fan of her singing for close to a decade now (though I know she has been singing for much longer than that). She has a very expressive way of singing, and she always provides a graceful visual presentation, too. (If you look at the comments under that April 2011 post, you’ll notice the observations about her hand movements.) The performance that I posted in the old post was from a Faiz centenary event; the following is from a more recent Faiz festival, in 2016.

3. Speaking of graceful visual presentations… “Hum Dekhenge” has been presented not only in song but also in dance. I was quite pleased to stumble upon this Kathak dance by Nighat Chaodhry. I particularly like the footwork and the spins! Her expressions and hand gestures are good, too, especially in the latter part.

By the way, one day in the near future, I hope to put together a list consisting of Kathak dances done to Faiz. I know right now that the list will include a clip that I found almost eight years ago by Pallabi Chakravorty and the Courtyard Dancers, and one from last spring’s New York Kathak Festival by Farah Yasmeen Shaikh. But there are actually quite a few Faiz Kathak dances posted on YouTube, so it might take me a while to sort out my other favorites to complete the list.

4. Now, I’d like to get to a few clips of “Hum Dekhenge” as performed at the current protests. Below is a touching version from a protest at Jawaharial Nehru University. It is sung mostly in a capella (with a little knee-slapping done for percussion in the background) by an unidentified student, so it is completely no-frills. But I found it quite moving. Additionally, it has good English subtitles.

5. It is nice to know that “Hum Dekhenge” has also been translated into different Indian languages. (You can find out about several of these other-language versions from Scroll.in, which has been publishing clips of them regularly.) I particularly like the clip below of the Tamil version. In addition to containing a fine rendition, the clip includes a bunch of good protest shots, as well as a good number of signs with messages actually printed in English (possibly to help gain the sympathies of those of us from elsewhere – which they have successfully done). By the way, the singer in this video is Anjana and the translation is by Ponni and Mangai.

6. Of course, I was happy to see a version in Malayalam, too. I like this version, and I wish I knew who the singer is. But I particularly like this video because it shows a link in the incredible 400-mile human chain!

7. I understand that “Hum Dekhenge” has been sung in many other parts of the world, too. I recall that it was used in different scenes of the Arab Spring close to a decade ago. As we know, though, that hopeful movement soon became a disaster in quite a few places, which is probably why I can’t even find the versions of “Hum Dekhenge” matched with the Arab Spring that I used to see all the time. Maybe we don’t want to open that can of worms anyway.

I would bet that “Hum Dekhenge” has also been performed plenty of times in the U.S.A. One such performance that I thought would be nice to include here was done in Philadelphia by Shahram, who was once the lead singer for Laal, a Pakistani rock band that I’ve posted about more than a few times on this blog before. It is sung in the original Urdu, though. I haven’t seen “Hum Dekhenge” actually performed in English, but there must be some English versions being done somewhere! (I’ll add one to this post later on if I find it.)

And I will leave the list there (at my usual/favorite number, seven), though there are many, many more versions available on YouTube, for those who care to explore.

I hope that this song keeps getting sung at the protests in India as well as in other places where authority needs to be toppled. (Actually, though, as I see it, that could be just about anywhere – but in some places, rebellion and/or revolution do seem to be needed more urgently than in others.)

Solidarity to the protesters in India. Inquilab zindabad!

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P.S. For an easy text reference, here is the translation that I mentioned above, from Ghazala’s Weblog.

We shall Witness
It is certain that we too, shall witness
the day that has been promised
of which has been written on the slate of eternity

When the enormous mountains of tyranny
blow away like cotton.
Under our feet – the feet of the oppressed –
when the earth will pulsate deafeningly
and on the heads of our rulers
when lightning will strike.

From the abode of God
When icons of falsehood will be taken out,
When we- the faithful – who have been barred out of sacred places
will be seated on high cushions
When the crowns will be tossed,
When the thrones will be brought down.

Only The name will survive
Who cannot be seen but is also present
Who is the spectacle and the beholder, both
I am the Truth- the cry will rise,
Which is I, as well as you
And then God’s creation will rule
Which is I, as well as you

This translation might be better than the English subtitles in some of the videos above, or it might not be as good. I will leave it up to the readers here to decide. Thankfully, there are many translations floating around, so feel free to pick the one that you like! From what I have seen, they all convey the same basic meanings – making it clear how absurd the “anti-Hindu” accusation really is.

There are a lot of good articles floating around that give more details about the new “controversy” surrounding this poem, explaining why it’s so absurd for anyone to label “Hum Dekhenge” as “anti-Hindu.” For a start, you might want to see the article in The Wire, Calling Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge ‘Anti-Hindu’ Is Both Laughable and Insulting. In addition to covering the points that I mentioned, this article discusses how the poem uses some imagery and ideas from Sufism. (This is not something that was unknown to me, either, but the writer, Raza Naeem, explains it much more thoroughly than I could. He also provides his own translation of the poem, which is probably more skilled than most.)

Oh, what a world

As we get close to the the end of the 2010s, it’s difficult to think about the state of the world. The rich continue to increase their obscene share of the world’s wealth and consolidate their power over the poor and the vulnerable. Authoritarian demagogues grab more power by stirring up hatred and division. Religious bigots happily do their bidding, inflicting violence upon those who don’t share their professed beliefs. And there are also enough hypocrites who claim to be so much against all those bad things but who really only do what they think they need to do in order to serve their own immediate self-interest.

Maybe some out there don’t see it that way, but it seems obvious to me.

Things have been bad enough here in the U.S., but it truly hurts to see what I have seen and read coming from India.

As I have briefly said a few times before, one of the things I like so much about the Indian films of the 1940s and ’50s is that so many took a social position exactly opposed to those kinds of ills. (And as I’ve also said, if some of these directors or actors worked in Hollywood at the time when they were making their films in Bombay, they surely would have been blacklisted!) From what I know, the Bollywood films of today aren’t being produced with the same prevailing social conscience. Some are even driven by people said to be major jingoists and bigots, themselves! But maybe that will change. Where there is resistance, there is hope (in all areas).

I will end this year on my blog with four songs from the Golden Age, on the state of the world… About different times, of course (with one even being about ancient times – supposedly), but also – needless to say – very relevant to our own. And by the way, for a change, all of the singers that I am featuring here are male – though there are only two males, since the first three songs are sung by Rafi (who could do this sort of song like no one else) while the last one is by Kavi Pradeep (who was pretty moving, himself, and who gets double credit for writing the lyrics – as I believe he usually did). 

[Unfortunately, I could not find an English-subtitled clip of “Ajab Tori Duniya,” but Tom Daniel did add subtitles within his upload of the entire film. If you want to pick this song out over there, fast-forward to 54:36.]

[Since I have added notes below all the other songs, I should add one to this one for symmetry. But no such notes are needed here. The clip contains pretty good English subtitles, and I wholeheartedly endorse the messages of both the song and the film!]

[I wish I could have found an English-subtitled version of “Yeh Duniya Yeh Duniya.” It was subtitled on the DVD that I watched some time ago. If anyone has a subtitled version, please let me know.]

[I included this clip specifically for the message of the song. I am not so sure about the message of the film (especially at the end), because I am basically a nastik, myself. But let’s save that discussion for another time.]

It’s Lakshmibai Mania!

It’s hard to believe it’s more than five years since I wrote my (last) review in this blog of the 1953 film Jhansi Ki Rani. When I watched the film again half a decade later, it felt as though I had seen it almost yesterday. But this time around, I was also finding  quite a few other works about Lakshmibai for comparison. (By the way, if there is anyone who does not already know whom I am talking about, this was Queen Lakshmibai of Jhansi – originally named Manikarnika – who famously led a battle against the British in the Indian rebellion of 1857. There is a nice description of the legendary queen over at Wikipedia,.) 

As far as I know, after the 1953 film, there was not another movie made about Lakshmibai for a long, long time. But now that situation has completely changed. By the end of the present year, 2019, we will have had two highly visible and much-anticipated films about the Queen of Jhansi released on the international market. On top of that, I found out about two substantial novels on the subject that came out within the past dozen years, and I have also noticed that on YouTube we can find a Lakshmibai serial and Lakshmibai cartoons and all kinds of documentary works. It’s Lakshmibai Mania!

I’m not even going to list every work revolving around Lakshmibai that I have noticed (especially considering all the titles I saw on YouTube), but I have decided to give a brief survey of the ones that I now feel somewhat acquainted with. A few are works that I have read or watched already – for which I am providing somewhat informal reviews – and a few are things that I hope to read or watch very soon (for which I can provide a little bit of advance information that I have found). I do intend to review the items I haven’t seen or read yet a little later, which means that this post will no doubt continue into a Part II. But in the meantime, it’s high time that I got a new post up on this blog, so here’s what I have so far. 

Jhansi Ki Rani (aka The Tiger and the Flame) (1953):  This film remains my favorite work on the subject. Since I still agree with everything I said before, I’ll just add a few points here.  In addition to Mehtab’s fine performance and a few other things I mentioned in my last post, I would like to stress – especially in light of another movie that I watched (which I will get to in a minute) – that this film stands out because of its solid, sympathetic characters on both sides. We certainly are encouraged to root for the Queen of Jhansi, but at the same time, the British enemies are not all depicted as cardboard-cutout villains. The dialogue seems a little stiff in the English-language version, but that may be because it is the English-language version; it might seem more natural in the Hindi one. (By the way, the English-language version was a special American release, but sometimes the actors sounded awfully British to me!)  But the characters can be very moving nonetheless. The scenes of tragedy in the film – such as the death of Lakshmibai’s child or the death of the queen, herself – are actually quite heart-wrenching. The ending is marvelously moving, too. In addition, the cinematography is very impressive and some of the scenes are quite spectacular to watch. In the English-language version that I saw, there are a couple of excellent dances (one of which tells a story that is the origin of the English title of the film: “The Tiger and the Flame”). I have noted before that there was a curious lack of songs in that version too. But, as Tom Daniel pointed out, this was because the English-language version/American release was very truncated. (And he does know a bit about that, because he’s the one who posted this version on YouTube!) There are longer versions available on YouTube also, but they are corrupted black-and-white copies that are almost unwatchable. I would recommend this color version no matter what it might be missing, and I would like to repeat the feeling that I expressed years ago, that it is a shame this film was not more successful at the box office.

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019) : This is the latest Hindi-film version of the tale. And it is a film that helped me to appreciate the 1953 version even more for a few reasons, including (as I mentioned) the older film’s depth or nuance in its character portrayals, especially with regard to the enemy forces. The British enemies in Manikarnika are cardboard-cutout villains and the film is plagued by one-dimensional or exaggerated characters in general. The queen, herself, is just too much of a superhero, and some of the action scenes – which are obviously aided by computer animation – are utterly absurd. (I could really have done without some of those slow-mo jumps.) This is a shame because the star, Kangana Ranaut, actually is a pretty good actress, and it was nice to see her perform her role so well, even given that she didn’t always have the best material to work with. On the other hand, since she is one of the film’s three directors, Kangana should also be held accountable for the film’s more silly qualities, no mater how good an actress she is.

But I don’t want to totally pan this film; overall, it’s not really that bad to watch. The pace is decent, the cinematography is very nice (it seems that we get nice cinematography in all the Lakshmibai films), and the action sometimes is colorful and exciting, outside of the more ridiculous scenes. The music is also very pleasant, though none of it stuck out in my mind. (Of course, most music in contemporary Hindi films doesn’t stick out in my mind like the music in the old films – not by a long stretch.)

There is also another actress who did a very nice job in this film – Ankita Lokhande, who played Jhalkaribai. Actually, I was very pleased to see the sections of this film devoted to Jhalkaribai. Jhalkaribai was a Dalit member of Queen Lakshimbai’s female guard who bore a strong resemblance to the queen and who legendarily acted as a decoy to allow the queen to escape (for a while) during the climactic Siege of Jhansi. This part of the tale of Laskhmibai is very memorable, and apparently (as I found while doing a small bit of research), some people feel that Jhalkaribai was the true greatest hero of Jhansi. It is unfortunate that in the 1953 film – at least in the version I saw – there was no attention given to the tale of Jhalkaribai. In fact, in that film, there was no attention given to any of the famous women in Queen Laskhmibai’s female army (though women guards were clearly shown in some scenes). But in more recent times, the queen’s all-female guard seems to be a strong area of focus in every major version of this tale that comes out. I suppose that’s one reason to be grateful for 21st century feminism!

Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran (published in 2014): Speaking of the queen’s all-female guard, they certainly get enough attention in this novel! That’s because the main character and narrator of the novel is not Queen Lakshmibai, but a member of her guard named Sita. And in the novel, at least, Sita is also best friends with Jhalkaribai. I suspect that some people might have been disappointed in this book because they expected it to be from Lakshmibai’s perspective, but we don’t even get any glimpse of Laskhmibai’s thoughts and feelings except from the perspective of Sita. Personally, though, I think it was refreshing to see the tale of Lakshmibai told from the perspective of one of her female soldiers. It was very clever, maybe even ingenious, for Michelle Moran to write it this way.

In many ways, this novel is a treat. There certainly are solid characters here – though there are also a couple of traitorous villains within the ranks of the Indians whose evil qualities might have been a bit overdone. There also are some twists at the end regarding the “real” (but fictional) cause of certain deaths that are a bit hard to imagine as real, possible history. And one more quibble I have regarding Rebel Queen is that Ms. Moran is sometimes a bit superficial in her depiction of certain aspects of historic Indian culture (at least compared to the depictions in some other things that I have read). For instance, I was a bit annoyed by her easy generalization about the devadasis. There is a point early in the novel when Sita faces the threat of being sold to the temple to become a devadasi because her evil grandmother (who is actually an evil step grandmother, as we learn at one point) does not feel that the family can be responsible for her anymore. (Sita’s mother had died and her father is sometimes left oblivious to things that are going on because he was deafened by a war injury.) Then Sita relates in her narration that everybody knew how terrible this was, because devadasis were just prostitutes – and when Sita’s father finally catches on to the plan, he arranges for Sita to seek a much better fate by training for a famous all-female army. Of course, that generalization about devadasis is a bit of an oversimplification, and I don’t think that devadasis began to acquire such a degraded reputation until the moralistic anti-nautch movement that occurred half a century after this part of the novel takes place.  And, of course, in this novel, there is no mention at all of the devadasis’ great dance tradition. (Maybe I found this more troubling than others might because I am a big fan of classical Indian dance and have eagerly read some of the dancers’ history.)

Michelle Moran actually is not a specialist in Indian culture, though she married an Indian man and she was inspired to write this book while living in India around the time of her wedding.  (She was originally from California, which is also her regular residence now.) In her various novels, she delves into different historical cultures, and her most popular novels take place in ancient Egypt. But I don’t get the impression that her specialty in historical fiction is revealing intricate historical facts. Rather, it is making people within the historical novels seem like characters we could easily sympathize with. While I was reading the scenes in Rebel Queen that took place within the residences of the women’s guard, it sometimes felt as though I was reading conversations between college girls in a contemporary dormitory. I think it’s because the characters’ humanness seemed very real, in a way that transcended time periods and historical circumstances. I also wondered if young women and teenagers might be the novel’s biggest intended target audience – which would be interesting, because that was no doubt the demographic of the main characters, too.

The way the novel is written, it should be broadly appealing. It’s certainly smoothly done. For instance, though there are a lot of plot elements to relate, the novel never becomes wordy or plodding. And while a lot of horrible and tragic things happen toward the end (after all, this is the 1857 rebellion), the more hopeful changes in the plot at the very end actually help to make this novel uplifting. 

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And here are a couple of items that I hope to check out in the near future – maybe to be discussed further in this post’s Part II. (By the way, I can’t guarantee that Part II will be my very next post, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that I am going to want to write it soon!)

The Warrior Queen of Jhansi (2019): This mostly English-language film and mostly UK production is scheduled for release in the U.S. on November 15. I hope to see it when it comes out or not long afterwards. It’s directed by Swati Bhise, who was originally known as a Bharatanatyam dancer but who also obviously has delved into many other artistic endeavors. She comes from Mumbai but, apparently, she currently teaches in various arts programs in New York City. The star of the film is her daughter, Devika Bhise, who has had some acting experience of her own, in addition to being trained in martial arts. (So, obviously, she has some qualifications for playing the Warrior Queen in this movie, in addition to being the director’s daughter. Actually, as I just found out, she also ended up directing part of the film during a time when her mother landed in the ICU with a respiratory ailment.) The film received some praise at a few film festivals and private screenings earlier this year, when it had a slightly different title, Swords and Sceptres: The Rani of Jhansi. Maybe the new title was chosen to give it a more popular kind of appeal, especially in the U.S. I hope that it will get a wide distribution, and that I’ll be able to find it easily in November so I can review it soon, in Part II of this post!  

Rani by Jaishree Misra (published in 2007):  There might be some people who’ve been reading this blog regularly who will recall that I mentioned this book Rani at the end of my post from five months ago, Freedom Fighting Courtesans and Warrior Queens of 1857. That post centered on a novel about another warrior queen (slightly less known than the Lakshmibai), Begum Hazrat Mahal. That novel was In The City of Gold and Silver, by Kenize Mourad. At the end of the post, I did bring the Queen of Jhansi up a little, not only because she obviously should be included under the subject of that post, but also because she is mentioned in Mourad’s novel. But I also brought up the fact that Mourad’s novel is compared to Jaishree Misra’s novel in a review written for The Hindu by Suneetha Balakrishnan. In that review, Ms. Balakrishnan said that Jaishree Misra’s novel was more engaging, and I have wanted to read Misra’s novel ever since. Now I know that Suneetha Balakrishnan also reviewed Misra’s novel directly for her blog Suneetha Speaks. After reading that review, I am even more interested in reading this book!

One thing I know from her review of Rani – which I am pretty sure I also saw mentioned in a book review elsewhere – is that Queen Lakshmibai is depicted as having a romance with a British man, which is an idea that some people might consider heretical. There was an old British childhood friend of Lakshmibai who appeared as a character in the 1953 film, and though he is married at the time when they unite as adults, he and Lakshmibai obviously do admire each other. The British friend, unfortunately, is also stuck with the job of pursuing Laskhmibai during battle (and, of course, it is he who is killed). I am pretty sure that this British friend is based on a real person, and I suspect that he might be the same man who becomes Lakshmibai’s romantic interest in Misra’s novel.

I do intend to read Rani soon, though I might have to sit in a research room to do it, because I haven’t been able to find the book anywhere in New York City except at the New York Public Library’s research center in Midtown. Or I may do something that I rarely do (for various reasons) which is to find a way to get the book online. In any event, I think there is a good chance that this novel will be reviewed for real in this post’s Part II. As I was saying, I am not sure if Part II is going to be the very next post, but if you want to read even more about this Lakshmibai Mania, stay tuned!

[Note half a year later: Well, I was a little slow in getting to the later items, but I really intended to sometime in the earlier part of 2020. Unfortunately, then we had a global pandemic, and at the very least, visits to the library and bookstores or DVD stores became impossible (and forget about any film showings in theaters). And I guess my attention strayed to other matters, too. One of these days, I will get to these, though. For now, I hope the previews will suffice!]

No, I Did Not Forget Noor Jehan’s Birthday!

I did NOT forget Madam Noor Jehan’s birthday, which was September 21 (when she would have turned 93). Unfortunately, though, time did not permit me to write a solid post for it this year and, besides, I think the series of full Noor Jehan birthday posts in this blog may have run its course. But I think those who have been following the Noor Jehan birthday posts for the past decade would agree that I have probably posted enough stuff! (Unless you think there can never be enough stuff when it comes to posting about Noor Jehan – an opinion that I would fully respect.)

For those who do not know about the series – or those who know but would like to look at it again – please go to last year’s post, which includes links that will take you to prior Noor Jehan posts (including the post from 2015 that includes links to all the others going back to 2009).

Meanwhile, my mind has been going in other directions, and I hope to have something interesting and comprehensive up fairly soon – on a subject related to other things that I have been writing about in recent months. (That is the plan, at any rate.)

But rest assured that I will never forget the birth anniversary of Noor Jehan, the all-time greatest singing star!

My Discovery of Classical Singer Azambai of Kolhapur Leads Me to a Search for a 1935 Film Starring A Teenager Named Chitalkar

One thing I love about exploring the classical Indian singers from the first few decades of the 20th century is that this can also lead to the discovery of some interesting early talkies in which they acted, too. It seems that the crossover between classical singing and acting in the old films was far from uncommon. Begum Akhtar comes to my mind as the most notable such crossover, but there apparently were quite a few others.

One other such singer who also did some film acting was Azambai of Kolhapur. I wish I could say that I knew about Azambai for a long time, but to be honest, I didn’t know about her at all until I looked through my YouTube subscriptions in the first week of August and stumbled upon this captivating khayal (in Raag Bihagra):

The YouTube poster, who (or which) is named ساقی حسن (I do not know how to translate that into English), also wrote a bunch of information about Azambai under the video, but I found some of it a bit difficult to follow, and it mostly consisted of details regarding who trained her and who might have, which pretty much went over my head due to my still-very-limited knowledge of the history of Indian classical music. One thing that did catch my eye, though, was this line:

Owing To Her Immense Fame During Early Days Of Hindi cinema, Over Musical Landscape Of British India, She Gave Voice To & Also Acted For A Few Of The Initial Hindi Flicks . . .

Because, of course, immediately after I read that, I wanted to know what those flicks were! I still don’t know the full answer if there were multiple flicks, but I started to learn about one such movie in the material written by YouTube poster cactus1762 under the next audio clip that I listened to, which was this very pleasing tarana in Raag Gaud Sarang:

I found the information below this clip to be a bit easier to follow than below the prior clip, so I’ll reproduce the whole description here. And, by the way, this information can also be found in a post at the blog Notes and Beats. (It could be that the blogger and the YouTube poster are one and the same person – or else the blogger simply lifted the information from the YouTube post. Unfortunately, that is another mystery that I have yet to solve.)

Azam Bai of Kolhapur (1906-1986) was also known as Azambai Pisal. Very little is known about her but the recordings she left behind testifies that she was a classical vocalist of truly exceptional quality. It is known that she was trained in the Jaipur-Atrauli style of Ustad Alladiya Khan, by one of his sons – either Manjhi Khan or Bhurji Khan during the 1930s. She also starred in a film named Naagaanand (1935) for which Vamanrao Sadolikar composed the music. Azambai of Kolhapur cut at least 15 78 RPM records released by the Odeon Company in 1936-37 – most of which are now only available in the collectors’ archives.

So now I really wanted to find out more about this film labeled here as “Naagaanand” (though I suspected – correctly – that the title did not need to be transliterated with quite so many “a”s). But before I did that, I wanted hear more from her! So I treated myself to another positively splendid piece of music posted by cactus1762 – another khayal, this time in Raag Nand:

And then right after I enjoyed that clip (which had the same exact information below it as the prior one), I went on my search for more information about this film . . . And it did not take me long to discover that this 1935 film called Naganand (which apparently also was spelled sometimes as Nagananda) actually featured a soon-to-be more prominent musical personality as a star – someone, in fact, who would become one of the very best music directors of the Golden Age. I found all this out – and more – via a post about a special screening of the film in Pune that was given on September 9, 2017 by the National Film Archive of India.

At the very top of the NFAI”s description of the film, we are told:

To commemorate the centenary year of renowned music composer C. Ramchandra (1918-1982), a special screening of the Marathi talkie “Naganand” (1935) has been organized on Saturday, 9th September 2017, 6pm at NFAI, Pune. C Ramchandra was the lead actor in this film. “Naganand” was the first talkie he worked on, at age 17.

And in the next paragraph, we get a good idea that the film was not very good – via quotes from an interview with Chitalkar, himself:

C. Ramchandra writes in his autobiography “Majhya Jeevanachi Sargam” (The Tune of My Life), “I have never seen a film featuring myself on the screen. When I called up the theatre where the film premiered, I was told that it has flopped, and that the 10 odd people in the audience had also walked out in the intermission. The theatre cancelled the showing of the second half. It was probably the biggest flop in history!” He said in an interview that since the failure of “Naganand,” he decided to stop pursuing acting and focus on music.

Though, of course, this does not mean that I wouldn’t want to see this film, because, as the NFAI points out (somewhat stating the obvious):

Despite its failure back then, a film such as this nevertheless remains an important part of our film history, and that is good enough reason to not miss this rare opportunity offered by NFAI.

But since I did miss that showing two years ago – and there was no way I could have traveled to Pune, India at that time anyway (nor can I go there now) – I definitely would love to find a copy of the film. That is especially true, given the notice that I saw at the end of this description:

The film will be screened with English subtitles.

Can anyone tell me how I could get a copy of Naganand (1935), starring Chitalkar (aka C. Ramchandra) and Azambai of Kolhapur, with English subtitles? Or is there a chance that anybody has it and can post it on YouTube? If your answer to either of those questions is “Yes,” please let me know right away!

In the meantime, I am going to explore some more of these early-20th-century Indian classical singers, because now I know that there is a lot of potential in such searches for very surprising discoveries in both music and films.

Gauhar Jaan – Great Singing Pioneer and Tragic Prototype

A few years ago, thanks to the efforts of two Facebook and blogging friends, I had the pleasure of receiving a free copy of the book My Name Is Gauhar Jaan! by Vikram Sampath. I received this book from Karen Joan Kohoutek (of the blog October), who sent me an extra copy of it after asking for a suggestion of whom to send it to in a conversation with Suzy AKA Sitaji (who should be familiar to many longtime readers here.) It was great, indeed, to have this thick biography about India’s first recording star. But I must have been very busy or distracted at the time, because I really only skimmed it and probably not cover-to-cover, either. But this past month, I decided to read it again, a few days after learning (on June 26) that people were observing Gauhar Jaan’s birthday. And as I started to read it, I realized that it connected in a lot of ways to a few books – and general subjects – that I had just recently read and blogged about.

For instance, after writing a bit about Wajid Ali Shah (as well as reading and writing about his famous wife), it was very interesting to read that Gauhar Jaan had started on her path to becoming a famous singer by singing (along with her mother) in Wajid Ali Shah’s court in Calcutta. Sampath also took the time to write a very informative chapter about the thumri, the musical form that specifically is connected to both Wajid Ali Shah (whose artistic reign was known for the growth of thumri and, especially, Kathak) and Gauhar Jaan (because it is a form of music that she became very well known for, too).

My Name Is Gauhar Jaan! also contains a good amount of information about the fate of the tawaifs in this era. Sampath writes a lot about the anti-Nautch campaigns that eventually contributed to Gauhar Jaan’s demise, but he also describes how Gauhar Jaan became the first among many tawaifs who transcended the limitations of the tawaif culture (which was due to decline in any event) when she became the first star of India to transfer her talents onto records. (By the way, contrary to what many people say, she was not the first Indian singer to have performances recorded – a fact that becomes evident in the book and which is also very well documented in an article by Surjit Singh. But she was, indeed, India’s first recording star.)

Apparently, in a great way, Gauhar Jaan was a true pioneer. But there was another, far less positive way in which she was also a sort of prototype.

The bad/sad side of Gauhar Jaan’s story looked very familiar to me as I read about it, because it had a lot in common with some other stories that I had read about (and wrote about in other blog posts). That is because, in addition to being a bit of a rag-to-riches story at the beginning of her career, she was even more a riches-to-rags story at the end.

The story of Gauhar Jaan’s decline, impoverishment, and sad demise reminded me a bit of the story of Zarina Begum, a protégé of Begum Akhtar (who actually had, herself, been known to be well influenced by Gauhar Jaan).  Since I have written about Zarina twice before in this blog (and also turned those blog posts into an article that was published in the journal The World of Apu), it was natural that Zarina’s story was one of the first that came to my mind. But there was an aspect of Gauhar Jaan’s decline that was more reminiscent of at least one of the artists whom I mentioned in my post Here’s to the Birth or Death Anniversaries of Three Classic Hindi Film Artists Who Certainly Should Not Have Died In Poverty. If you read the comments below that post, you’ll see an astute one by AK (blogger at Songs of  Yore) pointing out that at least some fallen Indian film artists contributed to their own demise with their “excesses in lifestyle” (that is, the reckless and ostentatious lifestyles that they indulged in), with “total lack of concern for savings for future” (probably because they never considered that the good days might end). And at that point, I pointed out that the fallen artist in my post who most fit that description was the great pioneering film cabaret dancer, our beloved Cuckoo Moray.

Unfortunately, due to limitations of time, space, etc., I have decided that I cannot get (back) into the specific tales of those later fallen artists here (unless you would like me to take another six weeks to put up a post). But with a little investigation, I’m sure that most readers will be able to find a few such stories. Since I mentioned Cuckoo, I would like to recommend the sad story to be found at Cineplot, and also to look at Wikipedia and other sources. You will, indeed, find some uncommon parallels. Meanwhile, let’s get back to our poor departed Gauhar . . .

While at her peak, Gauhar Jaan became notorious for the lavish way she traveled (very fancy stagecoaches, etc.), her elaborate, mostly paid entourage, and her heaps of highly authentic jewelry, she was overwhelmed with debt by the end of her life, when she died in a “desolate corner” (as Sampath describes it) of a hospital in Mysore after suffering from a fever resulting from an unspecified ailment. Though once surrounded by hordes of admirers, there was no one around to keep her company on her deathbed, and apparently, no one is sure exactly where she was buried, and she might have just been left in an unmarked grave. (Had there been resources set aside for the purpose, her body might have received an appropriate burial in Calcutta.)

And in future years, Sampath tells us, Gauhar Jaan’s legacy was nearly forgotten, as other musical stars – on records and then in films – claimed all the attention of audiences throughout the rest of the 20th century. But as with some of those other fallen stars of the 20th century, there seems to have been some revival of her legacy in the past couple of decades. That’s why Google issued a Gauhar Jaan “Doodle” for her birthday. (Unfortunately, I live in the U.S., where so many of these Google Doodles related to Indian music and films are never posted. Nonetheless, it usually is still pretty easy for me to find out about them and see them.) There have been re-releases of Gauhar Jaan’s work in recent times, and we can even find 114-year-old recordings of her in audio clips on YouTube (such as the great one that I have included below). Obviously, this revival has been somewhat facilitated by new technologies that brought global access to Gauhar Jaan’s recordings so that people like yours truly could hear her voice with the click of a button while sitting in an apartment in 21st Century New York City, USA.

At the end of his biography, Sampath speculates that Gauhar Jaan’s ruined emotional state – due to the decline of her career and her finances – might have been a major contributor to her death. As with some others among that not-small number of stars who sadly followed in Gauhar Jaan’s footsteps via their own decline and descent into obscurity, at the sad end to her tale, we are left thinking, if only she could have known that her reputation would be at least somewhat revived many years later. But there are many things that Gauhar Jaan could never have predicted, including the fact that her voice would be heard via technology that far surpassed the once seemingly miraculous sound recordings in which she had played the part of India’s greatest singing pioneer.