Tag Archives: Tera dil kahaan hai

Ten Composers, Ten Solos: The Magic of Asha Bhonsle

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I know I am late. Asha Bhonsle passed away, at the age of 92, on April 12. Within a couple of hours of the news of her death, there were tributes cropping up all across the net. Song lists, essays, memories, some misplaced attempts to jump on the bandwagon even if one wasn’t too sure what the fuss was about.

I am late, yes. I have to admit I was a little benumbed—Asha has always been one of my very favourite singers (dare I be an iconoclast and admit that I liked her more than Lata?). But more than that, she symbolized for me an older, sweeter time: an era of kinder films, gentler films, of sublime music and innocence. Asha was the last of the stalwarts, the last one standing of those who had created the magic of the 50s and 60s.

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Ten of my favourite come-hither songs

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… sung to a single person, not an audience.

Let me explain that a bit.

Hindi cinema, especially in the glamorous and colourful world of the 60s, is full of songs inviting love (or lust, or whatever interpretation one might want to put on it). Whether it’s a Helen with bizarre eye makeup singing Aa jaan-e-jaan to a caged lover in a floor show or a floral-shirted Joy Mukherji openly serenading Asha Parekh in a Tokyo party, there’s a good bit of sizzle, lots of “Come on and give us some love”.

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Ten of my favourite string instrument songs

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After I’d done my piano song posts, I began to think of other musical instruments that appear in the picturisation of songs. Songs where it’s not an orchestra (Ted Lyons and His Cubs, anyone? Or The Monkees?), but a hero or heroine, not a professional musician, being the one ‘playing’ an instrument? Guitars, I thought, would be a good place to start. A ‘guitar songs’ post. I tried by listing, off the cuff, all the songs I could remember as having a guitar-playing actor or actress. Then I went and checked on Youtube—and discovered that several of the songs I’d remembered as featuring a guitar actually featured a different string instrument: a mandolin, for example (in Tum bin jaaoon kahaan), or some even more unusual and exotic instruments.

String instrument songs: Baar baar dekho, from China Town Continue reading →