For good measure, Saigal revitalised the ghazal as popular and public form with his rendition of Ghalib, Zauq, Akbar, Arzoo and others and also went on to make recorded film music a lucrative business for music companies.
What was ironic in this that he was rejected twice by HMV in Delhi and Calcutta due to “lack of training” but went to be snapped by a perceptive agent of Hindusthan Records. One record, containing just a bandish “Jhulana jhulao re”, went on to sell a whopping five lakh pieces soon after its release in 1933!
Yet, posterity has not been very kind to him – an autodidact, without any formal training, who became a singing legend of such prowess that even classical singers were in awe of him. He also picked up Bengali so well that Rabindranath Tagore himself gave him permission to render ‘Rabindrasangeet’.
However, Saigal, if not forgotten, apart from a...
What was ironic in this that he was rejected twice by HMV in Delhi and Calcutta due to “lack of training” but went to be snapped by a perceptive agent of Hindusthan Records. One record, containing just a bandish “Jhulana jhulao re”, went on to sell a whopping five lakh pieces soon after its release in 1933!
Yet, posterity has not been very kind to him – an autodidact, without any formal training, who became a singing legend of such prowess that even classical singers were in awe of him. He also picked up Bengali so well that Rabindranath Tagore himself gave him permission to render ‘Rabindrasangeet’.
However, Saigal, if not forgotten, apart from a...
- 4/11/2023
- by Agency News Desk
- GlamSham
Rai Chand Boral, widely considered the father of Hindi film music, composed a superb soundtrack for Lagan. It will be remembered for the superlative singing by lead actors K L Saigal and Kanan Devi...
- 9/12/2017
- Film Companion
Before soaring to pan-India—and, indeed, international—fame with Do Bigha Zameen (1953) that spoke of the travails of Shambhu the peasant, Bimal Roy had, almost a decade earlier, in 1944, become a household name in Bengal with Udayer Pathey (Towards The Dawn), his directorial debut in Bengali for Calcutta’s New Theatres, remade in Hindi as Humrahi in 1945. The hugely successful Udayer Pathey, made by New Theatres on the smallest budget, actually became the studio’s biggest earner. The music was by Raichand Boral and the lyrics by Shailen Roy—in addition, the film featured three very memorable Tagore songs.
Bimal Roy’s works all have a distinct flavor of social realism about them, and Udayer Pathey is steeped in that flavor. It is the story of Anup Chaudhuri, an intrepid writer-intellectual who upholds the cause of the proletariat in a system where the balance of power is skewed towards the moneyed class.
Bimal Roy’s works all have a distinct flavor of social realism about them, and Udayer Pathey is steeped in that flavor. It is the story of Anup Chaudhuri, an intrepid writer-intellectual who upholds the cause of the proletariat in a system where the balance of power is skewed towards the moneyed class.
- 1/5/2013
- by Nivedita Ramakrishnan
- DearCinema.com
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