5-10-100

Who were the first prominent women playback singers? What are some of the well known songs rendered by them? This episode talks about two such names - Shamshad Begum and Geeta Dutt.  

While the emerging stars of late 40s Bollywood had their preferred on screen voices, which we discussed in Episode 3, the composers as the rightful creator of song, had their preferences as well. Naushad Sb introduced Mohammed Rafi. Shankar Jaikishan got Manna Dey to sing songs for them in non Raj Kapoor movies and S D Burman Sb got Hemant Kumar to give voice to his creations.

Late 1940s saw the arrival of a triumvirate which would rule Bollywood for the next 2 decades - Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand & Raj Kapoor. They needed a playback sound which would give authentic voice to their on-screen persona. In this episode, we look at the dynamics and bitter sweet stories of how these stars found their voice

1930s and 1940s were dominated by singing stars. The whole narrative was fashioned by them. Although playback singing was discovered in mid 30s, it could not find strong roots until late 1940s due to the dominance of singing stars like K L Saigal, Noorjehan, Suraiya and several others. Even our Dadamoni, Ashok Kumar, who was a popular actor in 1940s, sang his songs in films like Kismat. 

5 songs, 10 minutes (or about) and 100s of memories. That's the title of this podcast which documents the history of bollywood music -  the influences, composers, studios, actors, lyricists and of course, the singers. Episode 1 talks of the beginnings of music in hindi cinema or Bollywood; the early inspirations, themes and influences.