Mavrix

Category: Pop culture

  • Manna Dey – The Playback Singer Who Was Too (Classically) Good For Bollywood

    Manna Dey was born Prabodh Chandra Dey on May 1 1919, in Calcutta. Growing up, he was mentored by his uncle K.C. Dey, a popular singer and composer. He also owed his solid grounding in Hindustani music to Ustad Dabir Khan. When K.C. Dey left for Bombay, young Manna accompanied him. His first break as…

  • Long Career Spans In Hindi Film Music

    By Vibhendu Tewari This post was triggered by discussions on the longevity of careers following Ilaiyaraaja’s recent completion of 50 years as a music composer.  Career spans are vulnerable to the vagaries of time – death, illness, and changing public tastes cutting several careers short. Then, there are some late bloomers, who have shorter productive…

  • Hindi Film Music Artists Known By Their Screen Names

    Some music artists have never used their real names for their work in Hindi films. They adopted screen names early on in their careers and stuck with them all through. As a result, most of us know them only by their screen names. Artists adopted screen names for various reasons. Some did it to make…

  • Artist Aliases on MySwar

    An underrated feature of MySwar is its documentation of the various names used to credit artists at various points in time in their careers. Many Hindi film artists have gone by different names during their careers due to one of the following reasons: We have always attempted to document the names of cast and crew…

  • The Evolving Lexicon of Hindi Film Songs

    I have always been fascinated by the changing lexicon of Hindi film songs and how it correlates with changes in popular culture with time. To explore this phenomenon, I compiled a list of all unique words used in the titles of Hindi film songs – as documented on MySwar – and determined how many times…

  • Poetry In Hindi Film Songs

    Hindi cinema has a long tradition of tapping into India’s rich literary history for its songs. Since it is customary to attribute the lyrics of all Hindi film songs to the all-encompassing role of “Lyricists”, music listeners do not realise at times that some of them were not written for cinema. Sometimes, song lyrics are…

  • Hindi Film Lyricists As Playback Singers

    There are many well-known instances of Hindi film music directors singing songs. There are also cases of playback singers composing music. But cases of lyricists singing songs aren’t that well known. Let’s list a few prominent lyricists who have singing credits in Hindi film songs: Amitabh Bhattacharya is an accidental lyricist. He wanted to be a…

  • Hindi Film Music Inspired By Rabindra Sangeet

    This post lists the Hindi films songs or background themes that were based on or inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s music or poetry. Related read: Hindi films inspired by Tagore’s writing. These lists were compiled using official credits to Rabindranath Tagore on MySwar, text search for ‘Rabindranath Tagore’ on MySwar, and inputs from Archisman Mozumder and @GuzzlerBear.

  • Hindi Films Based On Rabindranath Tagore’s Works

    Geet Gata Chal (1975) was based on Tagore’s short story Atithi. This story was also adapted by Tapan Sinha for the Bengali film Atithi (1965).

  • Tag Search – Hindi Film Songs Based On Raaga

    In the last post, I talked about a new feature on MySwar to search for Hindi film songs featuring specified musical instruments. In this post, I talk about looking for songs based on the usage of raagas. I have only superficial knowledge of Indian classical music and raagas. I did, however, have an inkling that very…