Music that moves the human heart

By Sumathipala Solangaarachchi

Hindi music is very close to Sri Lankans in many aspects. First of all, we have a culture that is closely related to the Indian civilization. Our languages have the same Sanskrit foundation. We can easily understand the emotions of Indian people.

Hindi music soothes minds. Melodies of Hindi songs were composed on Ragas of North Indian classical music. All Ragas have individual characteristics in rendering various expressions. Hindi film music composers choose Ragas to stimulate the audience according to the moods in the films. By the background music those maestros made the audience thoroughly bound to the scenes.

The famous saying that 'Music begins to talk where dialogues end' reveals how strong their music is in captivating the audience to the movie. Once, when Naushad Ali, the great Indian musician, was on a visit to the USA an American inquired "What is the difference between your music and ours?" and Naushad replied "Your music has power to move your body, and our music has ability to move the human heart." Old Hindi music also serves as a stress-healer for troubled minds. It tranquilizes your disturbed mind, and thus makes you relaxed and healthy.

Music composed by Naushad Ali, Ravi, Salil Chaudhri, Roshan, Om Prakash Nayyer, Narhar Chitalkar Ramachandra, Chitragupt, Allahrakkha Qureshi, Usha Khanna, Khyyam, Sachin Dev Berman, S. N. Tripathi, Saraswathi Devi, Anil Bishvas, Madan Mohan, G. S. Kohli, Jayadev, Bulo C. Rani, R. C. Boral, Hemanth Kumar, Wasanth Desai, Hansraj Behel, Vinod (Eric Robert), Snehal Baskar, Gyan Dutt, Gulam Haider, Gulam Mohamed, Avinsh Vyas, Ravindra Jain, Master Mohamed, Shankar Rao Vyas, Sonik Omi, Rahul Dev Berman and pairs of musicians Husnlal-Bhagatram, Shankar-Jaikishan, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Kalyanji-Anadji, (the 'Veerji Shah' brothers), thoroughly grabbed the hearts of our fans.

Those musicians individually possessed their own styles of music and some prominently used particular musical instruments in their creations. Some were strictly in classical music; and some utilized folk music in mixer. Some of them admixed with musical styles of foreign countries, according to the status of the films they worked on. And they did not discriminate the musical instruments whether they are 'western' or 'oriental', so that they obtained the exactly desired sounds, in their creations.

After all, every listener could enjoy music created so, regardless of their nationality. The Hindi language, of course, is a very poetic and rhythmic one which has very short and beautiful words with punching accents. Sahir Ludhiyanavi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rajendra Krishan, Shakil Badayuni, Anand Bakhshi, Shaylendra, Hasrat Jaypuri, S.H. Bihari, Bharat Vyas, D.N. Madhok and Indeevar were some very talented Hindi lyricists who wrote songs with punching words.

Singers of Hindi songs also contributed greatly to enhance the elegance of that music by their wonderful voices; and ones like Asha Bhonsle, Mohammed Rafi and Mahendra Kapoor by their effective accenting of words too. Kundan Lal Sahegal, Noor Jehan, Suraiya, Zoharabai Ambawali, Ashok Kumar, Shamshad Begam, Lata Mangeskar, Mohammed Rafi, Geeta Dutt (nee Roi), Suman Kalyanpur, Mukesh Chand Mathur, Talat Mahamud, Manna Day, Asha Bhonsle, Sandhya Mukharji, Hemanth Kumar, C. H. Atma, Kishore Kumar, Usha Mangeskar and Mahendra Kapoor were very brilliant vocalists since 1930s. Some of them had very punching voices, while some possessed very soft and smooth voices. Some could change the tones of their voices according to the moods of the songs.

Hindi songs were manifold in the purpose they were created for. They can be initially categorized as sweet love songs, sad songs, divine or faith songs, comic songs, joyful songs etc. The old Hindi musicians chose singers to suit expected categories of songs. Some Hindi singers had individual specialities for different moods. Asha Bhonsle has a very sweet voice that has been taken for love songs and sometimes for amorous and intoxicated moods.

The voice of Mukesh was required for where sorrow and softness expected. Kishore Kumar formally has been singing comic songs with the style called 'yodelling'; and later his voice was required for the screen voice of the famous main actor Rajesh Khanna. Talat Mahamud who was being titled 'King of Ghazal' had a very fine wavy voice that specialized for sad songs.

Mohammed Rafi, having a strong masculine voice, was the most versatile singer as he could change his voice-tone and accenting in film songs to match the expected actions of the scenes. Rafi sang to suit the playful action of Shammi Kapoor, fairly serious action of Bharat Bhushan and for comic action of Johnny Walker and so on. Rafi has many sad songs too.

In local practical music composing North Indian classical music is mostly used or blended for building up a melody, first. And then, it is decorated with some western musical techniques. Sometimes, a melody based on local folk music is also used with the help of western musical instruments and techniques. That is how the local practical music comes to our ears.

Hindi musicians also do the same and thus the creations become very rich. Oriental music is strictly melody oriented. Musicians first make a melody and then choose chords and apply counter music. The union of oriental music and western music is fortunately possible because the note positions of both systems are on the same and exact audio frequencies, and both systems use twelve semitones in an octave.

The average oriental listener expects a beautiful melody in a Hindi or Sinhala song. Many good melodies of Hindi songs have deep seated in our memories and never leave. Many melodies found in most of the new films were not very tasty.

A good melody can be identified very simply by singing or humming it without any instrumental sound; and if you think it is tasty, then is a good one. For instance, sing a local folk song without instrumental support, and you may feel it is sweet. Try a new song this way and you can evaluate whether it could stay long in your memory. We can apply this method to test any oriental melody.

Local old-timers used Short-wave (SW) radios to receive the signals broadcast from India. "All India Radio" (AIR) broadcast their main channel "Akashwani" on several frequencies in the SW meter-band of radio. In 1957 "Vividh Bharati" service of AIR commenced, and was a very attractive channel which brought much interesting musical programmes.

Theatres like CROWN in Maradana, RITZ and later LIDO in Borella were prominent in Hindi film running and very favourite among Hindi movie fans. Some so-called middle-class people possessed audio disk driving machines called 'Gramophones', at home. This entirely mechanical device reproduces sound by playing back the ebonite disks on which the song sound tracks are recorded.

Pre-recorded Hindi song disks were imported from India. But due to the limited availability of records, most people sat around the radio set. Then the radio receiver was the favourite and widely used audio equipment.

As the "Akashwani" and "Vividh Bharati" services were on Short Wave, the local listeners also were fortunate to receive those channels on 49 and 31 meter-bands of SW. There was no FM transmission for public entertainment, at the time, and only AM was in operation. The sound reproduction on SW radio was heavily distorted due to AM systems suffer various types of noise interferences, and due to the instability o the layers of ionosphere. Because our country is in the fringe area of the signal rain of AIR, and other technical reasons the reproduced radio sound had fading effect too.

Some radio technicians managed to fine-tune their radio sets, adjusting internal coils and trimmer capacitors to improve sensitivity on those meter-bands, as they badly needed to enjoy Hindi songs. Even today our old-timer fans amazingly prefer fading effect, as their taste had been built up through so-received listening. That is a strong testimony for how eagerly they admired 'Akashwani' and 'Vividh Bharati' services received on short-wave.

People in Colombo and suburbs had an opportunity to listen to some 'Line Transmitted' local radio channels of the 'Radio Ceylon', by means of a system called "Redifusion".

This service was rented for homes and shops in the town. The system was operated just like the telephone line connection, provided with a speaker-box, equipped for volume controlling and channel changing.

There was a very favourite Hindi commercial radio service operating from the Torrington Square station of Radio Ceylon. This service was dedicated only for Indian listeners and was transmitted on SW from Ekala (close to Negombo) radio transmitting station. As the Torrington Square radio station was the origin of this channel, the Colombo based 'Redifusion' service conveyed it to their subscribers. Most of the people in Colombo city preferred this channel Though not the local listener could properly receive this channel on SW, another group of people had a casual chance for very clear listening. People resided along the inter-station signal beaming path from Colombo to Ekala, having FM radios, could receive this channel on FM band. Signal to them was surprisingly clear and was an exciting new experience, as the FM system suffers no interferences.

The 'Radio Ceylon' also had some Hindi song programmes on Medium Wave local channels. A late-night Hindi musical programme was presented by late veteran Hindi literate Ravi Lal Wimaladharma was a hot favourite, as not only he gave the Sinhala meanings of the songs but also he had a very smooth voice to match the mood.

Our old fans gratefully remember Mr. Wimaladharma for his contribution to quench their thirst of Hindi music. Today, many local radio channels and TV channels carry Hindi music in their programmes.

Smooth, sweet music is rare in most of the new films. Only a handful of good songs can be found in the Hindi films produced after the 1980s.

But, Naushad Ali said, the good music will appear again, someday, on public demand. Only good music will stay on.