You Were Great SJ !

You Were Great SJ !

Courtesy : Souvik Chatterji
http://www.cuts-ccier.org/

Shankar Jaikishan hailed the music of Bollywood during the Golden Age of Indian Cinema, the 40s, 50s and 60s. They had composed music in almost 200 films in a tenure of around 22 years. So great was the impact of their creative genius that it had a lasting impact on the music of the Hindi films. Shankar-Jaikishan understood the taste of the masses and were able to create music which made many Heroes the Stars. Even the molded tastes of the listeners of Bollywood songs. No wonder then that during their tenure as music directors, they were exceedingly popular and 75 per cent of the films for which their scores were everlasting hits - many have celebrated silver jubilees.

They were probably the only musical pair, who have given music to all the leading giants who had glorified the silver screen during the 1940, 1950s, and 1960s. Dilip Kumar Rajendra Kumar , Bharat Bhushan , Balraj Sahani Pradeep Kumar Anand Manoj Kumar, Shammi Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor, Biswajeet, Joy Mukherjee Jeetender in Mere Huzur, RajKumar, Sanjay Khan, Sanjeev Kumar etc besides their mentor Raj Kapoor


They were honored with the maximum number (nine) of Filmfare awards in the Indian film industry. In 1968, Shankar Jaikishan released an album, "Raga in Jazz Style : Shankar Jaikishan with Rais Khan." Shankar Jaikishan made a great impact on film music from the start. Their tunes range from pure classical Indian themes to more westernized tunes. They had a distinct style, which was adaptable to different stars and films. In the West, they are best known for the song "Jaan Pechan Ho", which originally appeared in the 1965 film Gumnaam. The musical number was replayed in the American film Ghost World and helped to catapult the popularity of Indian film music in America.


The other aspect of their creation include blending the Indian flavour with the foreign tunes wherever the films were picturised. Best examples can be the song “Sayonara Sayonara” in the film “Love in Tokyo”, 1965, had Japanese orchestration, the other being “Raat ke humsafar” in the film “An Evening Paris”,1967, had French flavour. Besides their use of few instruments showed the class of their own, Accordion in “Sub kuch sikha Humne na siki hoshiari” in the film Anari,1959, Saxophone in “Ai sanam jis ne tujhe chand sa surat di hai” in the film Diwana, 1967, Synthesized Harmonium played by V. Balsara in “Awara Hoon” in the film Awara, 1951.

One of the reasons why Shankar Jaikishan did not get the acknowledgement of providing immortal tunes in that era is because it could not be identified as which song is composed by Shankar and which song is composed by Jaikishan. Otherwise Naushad was awarded with Dada Saheb Phalke for his brilliant contribution to Indian music, Majrooh Sultanpuri also received the same award in the lyricist category, Shankar- Jaikishan was deprived of that honour. The other reason may be that they had worked with Raj Kapoor for the longest period and most of the credit of the unforgettable tunes were taken away by Raj Kapoor himself. An archive should be created for the rich and classical creations of Shankar Jaikishan where the works can be preserved for future generations to take inspiration from.

Shri Chatterjee further writes :-

My father Chitta Ranjan Chatterji, Ex chief Public Prosecutor, Bankshall Court, (CMM Court), Kolkata had solved a case relating to Music Rackett in HMV in the early 1980s. The Zonal manager of HMV, Mr. Sri Daure gave him a present of HMV discs of film “diwana-composed by Shankar Jaikishan” and Disc of “ Pakiza- composed by Ghulam mohammad”. Mr. Sri Daure was involved with numerous immortal recordings of HMV and he mentioned that there was a song in Diwana, titled “ tumhare bhi jai jai, humare bhi jai jai, na tum hare, na hum hare”. The song was picturised with Raj kapoor staying in the railway station and Saira Banu travelling in a train. The song beat that was composed by Shankar-Jaikishan synchronised the actual sound of the movement of the train. It was only possible from Shankar-Jaikishan. It was reported in AnandaBazar Patrika, the Bengali Newspaper under the column of Ashis Ghosh.