Film Credits On MySwar

Since MySwar launched 2011, we have steadfastly focused on crediting musicians making Hindi film music – music directors, lyricists, singers and when the information was available, arrangers, assistants, instrumentalists and so on. We believe that musician credits is a sadly overlooked aspect of music metadata in India. That is the reason you didn’t see any credits for the film cast and crew all this time. While we continue to hold that belief, we believe we have made a significant contribution in cataloguing comprehensive and accurate musician credits and it’s now time to start adding other film credits as well.

A few weeks ago we started showing credits for the film crew – specifically Director, Producer, Writer (Story, Dialogue, Screenplay), Cast and Studio. So far we have credits for over 1500 films and you should be able to find complete filmographies of the superstars – Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan – and the major directors – Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Gulzar, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Manmohan Desai, Nasir Hussain, Shakti Samanta, Subhash Ghai, Vishal Bhardwaj, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Yash Chopra, among others. This remains a work in progress effort as we continue to add film credits for other films based on priority decided by the film’s significance and the significance of the film’s cast and crew.

This additional information is available on the website in the album page as well as in the app in the additional information screen for albums. On the website, this information is available in Hindi as well English.

Sholay

One of the challenges we faced in this project is reconciling artists with same or similar names. For example, while Nasir Hussain (नासिर हुसैन) is the producer/director behind films like “Teesri Manzil” (1966), “Yaadon Ki Baarat” (1973) and “Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak” (1988); Nazir Hussain (नज़ीर हुसैन) is the actor known for his role in films like “Devdas” (1955), “Kashmir Ki Kali” (1964), “Jewel Thief” (1967) and “Amar Akbar Anthony” (1977). We have tried our best to ensure proper credits by using the primary source where we could – the credits in the film itself – as well as a number of other sources including the venerable Hindi Film Geet Kosh. If, however, you find mistakes, please do let us know and we’ll fix it.

In addition to regular search and display, you can also use Advanced Search to find songs that include actor/producer/director/writer/studio parameters. The results from these searches are indicative since – a) we don’t have all the films covered yet for these new credit attributes, b) the credits are at the film level, not the song level (relevant specially for actors).

I hope you like this new facet of MySwar and enjoy the delicious nuggets of information it offers.

MySwar App Update On iOS – Going Free!

We released a new version of the MySwar app on iOS yesterday. This update makes the app free and displays banner ads. There is an option to make an in-app purchase to remove the ads for a period of 1 year (Upgrade option in Settings).

We realize that some of you have purchased the app only recently and this move may appear unfair. To address this scenario – we ask you to send us an email at [email protected] with your iOS device UDID and we will help you get back to the ad-free version (for one year). If you need help figuring out the UDID, let us know and we’ll help you.

If you still haven’t downloaded the app, there really is no excuse now. Get it from here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/myswar/id622503117?ls=1&mt=8

The Android app was always free and remains free: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mavrix.myswar

Hindi Version of MySwar – Behind the Scenes

Take a big cup of coffee and settle down comfortably. This is going to take time. I have been part of big projects which include internationalization and localization. But at most places we would have string of parameters which you would translate to the respective language. The app will pickup the required language file and show the UI in respective language. In some cases we would change the way how dates, currencies and floating points were displayed. Myswar was a little different for me. Here we wanted not just the UI but the whole (we still have gaps) content in Hindi. We also wanted search, sort, numeric liberals, dates in Hindi. This blog post will be about that, its meant to be like a reference note to myself for later use and hence in detail.

1. UTF-8 or UTF16? What to use, conversions…

This time before I jumped into developing, I really wanted to understand the meaning of Unicode encodings. Specially what UTF-8 and UTF16 meant, differences etc. The below video explains UTF-8 in a very simple manner

I would suggest you to watch the following detailed videos on ASCII, UTF16/32 and UTF-8 when you get time. It’s very important as a developer to know how characters are represented behind the scene.


UTF8 has won the war in terms of character encoding for the web. Specially because of its backward compatibility with ASCII. So UTF-8 it was for myswar.

2. Translation and Transliteration

We had labels which needed to be translated into Hindi, we used Google Translation API to do that. But as far the album/song titles etc we had to do transliteration. I used my old script to that but the quality of the transliteration wasn’t great. So we kind of had to create our own dictionary words to work along with the script to resolve issues.

3. Application Programming

Application programming is still very difficult when it comes to using local languages. Some issues that we faced while coding of hindi, there could be many more

String length

len(s)

Return the length (the number of items) of an object. The argument may be a sequence (string, tuple or list) or a mapping (dictionary). That’s not actually correct definition. When it comes to strings its the count of bytes by default.

>>> len('म')
3
>>> len('m')
1
>>> len('मt')
4
>>> len('मt'.decode('UTF8'))
2

So you can’t reliably use len to get the count of characters by default. You need to decode it every time. Thats a pain.

Even simple math is impossible

>>> १+९
  File "", line 1
    १+९
    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>> 1+9
10

So if you ever stored numbers in Unicode then every time you want to do some kind of math on it you need to translate them into ASCII. Same applies for calendar operations.
Equals don’t always work all the time aka what you see is not what you get

>>> print 'क़' == 'क़'
False
>>> print u'\u0958' == u'\u0915\u093c'
False
>>> import unicodedata
>>> print  unicodedata.normalize('NFC' ,u'\u0958') == unicodedata.normalize('NFC', u'\u0915\u093c')
True
>>> print  unicodedata.normalize('NFC' ,u'क़') == unicodedata.normalize('NFC', u'क़')
True
>>>

Basically what you see is not what it is inside. The same character (which looks the same) might have a different value. I wont go into details you can read this detailed FAQ on Normalization.

Sorting Unicode
A python list containing Unicode strings wont sort properly. If we want to sort it properly then we need to implement Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA). You can check the attempt made by James Tauber. Logic is simple and straight forward. I hope it will be built into the python language very soon. Sorting is fixed in most of the new databases. They can mostly sort Unicode columns by default. In mongo its still an issue, they don’t support sorting a column by collation. You need to implement it yourself if you want Unicode sorting.

Search, filter
Since the EQUALS doesn’t work the way you want and regular expression is still very basic and messy. If you have search or filter functionality you will have to do many trial and error. This needs a separate post.

Localization of date and time formats
It’s almost impossible. You will have to make your own routines to display date and time in your own language.

4. Localizing strings in JavaScript

As far as I know there are still no standard ways to implement localization in JavaScript. For example if you have a date object, how do you localize to show the date in Hindi and can we sort it in JavaScript? There are some libraries which help you in direct string replacement but I guess that’s not enough. As of now better idea would be not to depend on JS.

5. Input method – JavaScript – JQuery IME

inputting is still an issue. Many indians don’t have any input software installed. As of now the best way is to have it as part of JavaScript. I found Wikipedia’s jquery.ime very simple to use. I am still experimenting with it.

Each of these issues can be a blog post by themselves. I will write about them in detail in coming days.

“Song Templates” And Innovation In Hindi Film Music

This post is prompted by a conversation I had yesterday on Twitter regarding a lovely new song that had just come out – the Amit Trivedi composed, K. Mohan sung Kinare (Queen, 2014).

There were other such comparisons of Queen’s soundtrack with Amit Trivedi’s prior work including Dev.D, Lootera (comment above), Udaan, Isahqzaade and Kai Po Che. Within these comparisons is a critique (not always explicit) of Amit Trivedi’s work – that he is not experimenting enough or that he’s using “song templates” that are making his work predictable. In this post, I intend to present an alternate view.

But before that, here is an observation that most will agree with  – that Amit Trivedi has a sweet spot in terms of genres – Pop/Rock, and Pop/Rock fused with semi-classical or folk music. So then the question becomes if his sweet spot takes away from his music. My opinion is that it does not. Trivedi’s sweet spot is not a spot, it’s really a large, multi-dimensional kaleidoscopic canvas. Considering that history has produced great artists who’ve spent their entire careers on a single genre of music, even if Amit Trivedi restricts his music to a combination of only Pop/Rock/Semi-classical/Folk – he will still be able to produce a rich, solid body of work, provided he keeps producing the kind of stellar tracks that he has till date. My personal belief is that he will do that and more.

Now my take on the “song template” criticisms.

A lot of the time, when people talk about “templates” or “hangover” in the context of music, I believe they’re referring to the artist’s signature or style – a pattern for structuring and arranging songs. Pancham’s was one such, easily identifiable signature. For me, the signature is not necessarily a bad thing. It is possible for the signature to be used in several different songs and still stay fresh. The appeal of Pancham’s signature thrived across not just many Pancham songs, but also songs composed by other composers, eg: Ulfut Mein Zamane Ki (composed by Sapan – Jagmohan) and Vaada Karo Jaanam (composed by Basu – Manohari).

In the instance of Kinare (Queen), Shikayatein (Lootera) and Naav Hai Teri (Udaan), in addition to Amit Trivedi’s signature, there are additional elements of similarity – the singer – K. Mohan – and the general theme/mood of these songs. It appears to me that for some people, a combination of these similarities is distracting enough to appreciate what are really very different songs. I draw consolation from the fact that even A.R. Rahman, has not escaped the “song template” criticism – a song as lovely as “Aise Na Dekho” (“Raanjhana”) had people disapprovingly talking about how similar it sounded to “Tu Bole Main Boloon” (“Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”).

Progress in Hindi film music has been incremental for the most part. There are very few music directors who have been innovative enough to change the course of music in Hindi films. There are two who come to my mind in terms of the biggest impact – R.D. Burman for his experiments with instruments and arrangement and A.R. Rahman for experiments with the song structure. However, depending on your taste in music, you may like the work of other composers more than R.D. Burman’s or A.R. Rahman’s – and that’s all right. In other words, our taste in music isn’t determined by how innovative the artist is – it is quite simply what sounds good to our ears. Innovation in music is great as an aspiration but doesn’t always make for songs we like. In fact, experiments may not always have the desired effect – I felt that Raanjhana’s music was cluttered and Milliblog’s verdict on Highway -“occasionally accessible”. Conversely, there are several composers through history who may not be known for their experimentation but are considered great nevertheless. Therefore, I believe it is as meaningless to exhort musicians, who make good music otherwise, to experiment more as it is to pull good composers down if their experiments don’t work. They all play a role in the music ecosystem and I believe we should encourage and support them.

And to seal the argument, here is a video that proves that all hit pop songs are really the same. (Kidding!)

PS: Plagiarists and truly unimaginative music directors (you know who they are) are out of the scope of this discussion.

2013 Bollywood Music Review

Another eventful year had come to an end and it’s time to take stock of year that was for Hindi film music. We did a similar review last year, if you’re interested.

2013 saw the release of 154 films with 999 songs between them.

We lost a number of artists in 2013. Some were young and their end was unexpected – Ajay Jhingran, Rituparno Ghosh and Sandeep Acharya. Others left behind a substantial musical legacy – Lakshmi Shankar, Madhubala Zaveri, P.B. Sreenivas, Pran, Reshma, Shamshad Begum, Vaali, Vitthalbhai Patel and the last of the male singers from the classic era of Hindi films – Manna Dey.

But the show went on and a number of new artists made their debuts. While some of them were indie artists making what might just be a brief foray into Bollywood, others are probably going to be Bollywood staple in years to come. Some of the notable debuts of 2013 were:

  1. Composer: Advait Nemlekar,  Akshay Hariharan, Atif Afzal, Bramfatura, Harpreet Singh, Indraneel Hariharan, Karan Kulkarni, The Lightyears Explode, Maatibaani, Mangesh Dhakde, Modern Mafia
  2. Lyricists: Ali Hayat Rizvi, Gurpreet Saini, Punam Hariharan, Ram Ramesh Sharma, Siddharth – Garima, Ubaid Azam Azmi
  3. Male Singers: Atif Afzal, Geet Sagar, Gopi Sunder, Indraneel Hariharan, Munawar Masoom, Najim Arshad, Nitesh Kadam, Osman Mir, Padmanabh Gaikwad, Sanam Puri, Vikas Ambhore
  4. Female Singers: Chaitra Ambadipudi, Jonita Gandhi, Mili Nair, Nirali Kartik, Saba Azad, Zebunnissa Bangash

The most prolific composers in 2013 were:

  1. Pritam – 8 films, 51 songs
  2. Sachin – Jigar – 7 films, 37 songs
  3. Sajid – Wajid – 5 films, 23 songs

While Pritam’s appearance at the top of this list is no surprise, 2013 will be seen as the year Sachin – Jigar established themselves as bankable composers and entrenched themselves in Bollywood. Surprisingly, Sajid – Wajid continue to be on this list despite their lackluster scores.

The most prolific lyricists in 2013 were:

  1. Kumaar – 16 films, 72 songs
  2. Amitabh Bhattacharya – 11 films, 42 songs
  3. Irshad Kamil – 5 films, 37 songs

Kumaar has been perhaps the most low profile of the current lot of lyricists so his name at this top of this list and the margin between him and the Amitabh Bhattacharya comes as a surprise.

The most prolific male singers of 2013 were:

  1. Mika Singh – 49 songs
  2. Sonu Nigam – 31 songs
  3. Arijit Singh – 28 songs

Mika Singh appears to be the industry’s favorite singer right now. It’s pity though that he is stuck in a rut in terms of the kinds of songs he sings. 2013 was Arijit Singh’s breakout year in terms of both the number of songs he sang as well as the mass appeal he was able to generate, thanks primarily to Ashiqui 2.

The most prolific female singers of 2013 were:

  1. Shreya Ghoshal and Sunidhi Chauhan – 38 songs each
  2. Monali Thakur, Palak Muchhal – 14 songs each
  3. Mamta Sharma, Shalmali Kholgade – 13 songs each

While the divas – Shreya Ghoshal and Sunidhi Chauhan – continue to dominate the scene, there seems to be a lot of competition amongst female singers. It’s good to see a newbie – Shalmali Kholgade (2012 was her debut year) on this list as it is to see Monali Thakur, who as been around for a few years now, finally get her due.

Finally, based on  a combination of ratings and number of well-rated songs in 2013, the most popular artists of 2013 were:

  1. Most popular composers: Pritam, Amit Trivedi, Sachin – Jigar
  2. Most popular lyricists: Irshad Kamil, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Kumaar
  3. Most popular male singers: Arijit Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, Amit Trivedi
  4. Most popular female singers: Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi Chauhan, Palak Muchhal

The Top 100 Bollywood Songs Of 2013

So here it is finally – the 100 best rated film songs on MySwar in 2013:

  1. Piya Milenge (Raanjhanaa)
  2. Khushamdeed (Go Goa Gone)
  3. Sawar Loon (Lootera)
  4. Manjha (Kai Po Che)
  5. Shubhaarambh (Kai Po Che)
  6. Murshid Khele Holi (D-Day)
  7. Ankahee (Lootera)
  8. Meethi Boliyan (Kai Po Che)
  9. Manmarziyan (Lootera)
  10. Zinda (Lootera)
  11. Shikayatein (Lootera)
  12. Alvida (D-Day)
  13. Kabira Encore (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  14. Slow Motion Angreza (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  15. Dhuaan (D-Day)
  16. Tu Mun Shudi (Raanjhanaa)
  17. Tum Hi Ho (Aashiqui 2)
  18. O Rangrez (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  19. Aise Naa Dekho (Raanjhanaa)
  20. Sunn Raha Hai (Aashiqui 2)
  21. Tore Matware Naina (David)
  22. Har Kisi Ko (Boss)
  23. Milne Hai Mujhse Aayi (Aashiqui 2)
  24. Ghum Huye (David)
  25. Out Of Control (David)
  26. Ajnabee (Madras Cafe)
  27. Charon Taraf (John Day)
  28. Mann Tu Shudi (Baat Bann Gayi)
  29. Ek Ghadi (D-Day)
  30. Khud Se (Madras Cafe)
  31. Laal Ishq (Ram-leela)
  32. Out Of Control (Choir Version)
  33. Bandhay (David)
  34. Raanjhanaa (Raanjhanaa)
  35. Mera Mann Kehne Laga (Nautanki Saala)
  36. Kabira (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  37. Ambarsariya (Fukrey)
  38. Kai Po Che (Kai Po Che)
  39. Monta Re (Lootera)
  40. Saadi Galli Aaja (Nautanki Saala)
  41. Badtameez Dil (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  42. Dil Kaagzi (Gippi)
  43. Meri Aashiqui (Aashiqui 2)
  44. Tose Naina (Mickey Virus)
  45. Tum Tak (Raanjhanaa)
  46. Mann Baavra (Gippi)
  47. Ghanchakkar Babu (Ghanchakkar)
  48. Kaanha Mose (Black Home)
  49. Mera Mann Kehne Laga (Reprise) (Nautanki Saala)
  50. Aye Dil Bata (Ishq Actually)
  51. Kaun Mera (Special 26)
  52. Kap Kap (Hindi) (Prague)
  53. Baarish (Yaariyan)
  54. Khoon Choos Le (Go Goa Gone)
  55. Gurbani (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  56. Kangna (The Reluctant Fundamentalist)
  57. Ay Sakhi (Raanjhanaa)
  58. Title (Chennai Express)
  59. Bhaag Milka Bhaag (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  60. Chahun Main Ya Naa (Aashiqui 2)
  61. Sapna Re Sapna (Ek Thi Daayan)
  62. Aaja Meri Jaan (I Love New Year)
  63. Ilahi (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  64. Piya Aaye Na (Aashiqui 2)
  65. Mera Yaar (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  66. Babaji Ki Booti (Go Goa Gone)
  67. Heer (Singh Saab The Great)
  68. Ilahi Reprise (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  69. Love Me Thoda Aur (Yaariyan)
  70. Kabhi Jo Baadal Barse (Male Version) (Jackpot)
  71. Kabhi Jo Baadal Barse (Female Version) (Jackpot)
  72. Chikadanga (Warning)
  73. Darbadar (I Me Aur Main)
  74. Kaun Mera (Special 26)
  75. Ishaan Rising (Kai Po Che)
  76. Kaise Bataaoon (Cantabile) (3G)
  77. Aasaan Nahin Yahan (Aashiqui 2)
  78. Banarasiya (Raanjhanaa)
  79. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (Rock Version) (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  80. Sun Le Re (Reprise) (Madras Cafe)
  81. Sun Le Re (Madras Cafe)
  82. Main Rang Sharbaton Ka (Reprise) (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  83. Main Rang Sharbaton Ka (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  84. Mere Bina Tu (Duet) (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  85. Mere Bina Tu (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  86. Aankhon Hi Aankhon Ne (Duet) (Mickey Virus)
  87. Janam Janam (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  88. Khalbali (3G)
  89. Maston Ka Jhund (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  90. Allah Meherbaan (Ghanchakkar)
  91. Jheeni Re Jheeni (Issaq)
  92. Jhalkiyan – Reprise (Kaafiron Ki Namaaz)
  93. Aankhon Hi Aankhon Ne (Female) (Mickey Virus)
  94. Janam Janam (Reprise) (Phata Poster Nikhla Hero)
  95. Dil Duffer (Gori Tere Pyaar Mein)
  96. Balam Pichkari (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani)
  97. Zinda (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)
  98. Aashiqui (The Love Theme) (Aashiqui 2)
  99. Sunn Raha Hai (Female) (Aashiqui 2)
  100. Mast Kalandar (David)

You can also check out the complete list of the well-rated (3 and above) Bollywood songs of 2013. And here is the  playlist of 2013’s best Bollywood songs.

And this is still not enough, you can always go back the 2012 list.

Here’s to wishing you a very happy and musical 2014.

What Are Your Most Favorite Non-Film Songs Of 2013?

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote a post about the best Bollywood songs of 2013. Since then, the top 10 rankings have change significantly. I am not surprised and my guess is it may change some more over the next few weeks. If you haven’t already rated already, please do.

Which brings us to the best non-film songs of 2013. Now this is a lot broader category than Bollywood, so what we’re talking about is the non-film songs on MySwar – which is mainly Hindi/instrumental tracks. Coke Studio dominates this list but this year also had some other significant albums, my favorites being Vasuda Sharma’s Attuned Spirits, Raghu Dixit’s Jag Changa and Jagjit Singh’s The Voice From Beyond. Here is the listing of the most popular, non-film songs of 2013 (as of now), and here’s our list of non-film albums released in 2013.

At this time, the top 10, non-film songs of 2013 are:

  1. Aao Balma (Coke Studio)
  2. Zindagi Jaisi Tamanna Thi (The Voice From Beyond)
  3. Khuda Ke Vaaste Apna Hisaab (The Voice From Beyond)
  4. Barsan Laage Nain (Attuned Spirits)
  5. Giridhar (Attuned Spirits)
  6. Jaagi Jaagi Raina (Attuned Spirits)
  7. Laagi Lagan (Attuned Spirites)
  8. Kyun Naa (Coke Studio)
  9. Phir Le Aaya (MTV Unplugged)
  10. Kodagaana Koli Nungitha (Jag Changa)

Please do rate your favorites. We will finalize this list by mid January.

MySwar.Com – अब हिन्दी में

If you can’t wait to check it out, go right ahead to MySwar.Com in Hindi. If you’re interested in the backstory, carry on.

For some time now, we have felt the need to provide a Hindi version of MySwar. For a website about Hindi films songs, that seems kind of obvious. However, we’ve been guilty of staying in our comfort zone – English – for various reasons (excuses?), the primary being higher priority features we needed to get implemented.

Over time though, we realized that by publishing only in English, we are excluding a large segment of music lovers from our website. Seeing “wrongly” transliterated search keywords in English (through search engines and on the website) gave us an understanding of the difficulties people from this segment face in English-only websites. This interview with Google India’s MD Rajan Anandan, gave us the nudge we needed to kick-start this project. In the interview, Rajan talks about how the dearth of content in regional languages is holding back internet penetration and that he expects the next 300 million users of Google India to use regional languages.

Thejesh’s experience using the Google Transliteration API helped but the extent of changes ensured that we had to put in a lot of effort into the project. A combination of the Google Translate API run on our database helped automate the transliteration effort to an extent but we did have to mark about 50% of the transliterated text for manual verification. The manual verification was required because the same word in English script could be written in different ways in Hindi. For example, “bahar” could be बाहर or बहार; “to” could be either तो or टु. We also had to spend some time translating the static pages, literals and messages but that was a piece of cake compared to the database.

The other significant work was of course the extensive code changes as well as positive and negative tests.

This implementation leaves some English text behind – including artist bios and trivia – but we believe that this version is enough to make the website a lot easier to use for those more comfortable with Hindi. I hope you like this update as much as we do.

What Are Your Favourite Bollywood Songs Of 2013?

As 2013 draws to a close, it is time to review the best songs that came out this year. Last year’s post of The Top 100 Bollywood Songs Of 2012 is amongst our most popular posts and if you haven’t already seen it you might want to visit it because you’ll likely find some wonderful songs that you may not have heard.

Please make your opinion count this year and give your ratings (registration/login required).

While you’ll find the complete list of the best rated Bollywood songs of 2013 here, the top 10 songs as of now are:

  1. Alvida (D-Day)

  2. Khushamdeed (Go Goa Gone)

  3. Slow Motion Angreza (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag)

  4. Piya Milenge (Raanjhana)

  5. Tore Matware Naina (David)

  6. Har Kisi Ko (Boss)

  7. Ghum Huye (David)

  8. Sapna Re Sapna (Ek Thi Daayan)

  9. Sawaar Loon (Lootera)

  10. Manjha (Kai Po Che)

Happy listening and rating!

[Update: The top 100 Bollywood list is published.]

Songless Hindi Films

When we set out to build MySwar as a comprehensive catalog for music from Hindi films, we didn’t pay a lot of attention to films that didn’t have any songs. This became apparent during the discussion on Twitter, that followed when we published this trivia:

Thanks to the “demands” of a few music lovers (!), we decided to give a shot at listing all Hindi films without any songs. For now, this blog post will serve as the repository for this list. These films are catalogued on MySwar as well but not highlighted in any of the listings. This list is not perfect – some of these films may not truly belong here and we may be missing some. For example, Pushpak was a silent film and others like The Perfect Murder and Parzania are not Hindi films. If you know of any film that we should add to this list, let us know in the comments section.

Anyway, here goes:

  1. Naujawan (1937) – MUSIC: Master Mohammed
  2. Munna (1954) – MUSIC: Anil Biswas
  3. Kanoon (1960) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  4. Bhuvan Shome (1969) – MUSIC: Vijay Raghava Rao
  5. Ittefaq (1969) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  6. Rakhi Rakhi (1969) – BACKGROUND SCORE: B.M. Chandavarkar
  7. Sara Akash (1969) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  8. Uski Roti (1970) – SANTOOR: Ratan Lal
  9. Aashaadh Ka Ek Din (1971) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Jaidev
  10. Maya Darpan (1972) – MUSIC: Bhaskar Chandavarkar.
  11. 27 Down (1973) – MUSIC: Bhuban Hari (Bhubaneshwar Misra and Hariprasad Chaurasia)
  12. Achanak (1973) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vasant Desai
  13. Duvidha (1973) – FOLK MUSICIANS: Ramzan Hammu, Saki Khan, Latif.
  14. Ankur (1974) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vanraj Bhatia
  15. Mrigayaa (1976) – MUSIC: Salil Chowdhury.
  16. Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastan (1978) – MUSIC: Bhaskar Chandavarkar
  17. Chirutha (1980) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  18. Satah Se Uthta Aadmi (1980) – MUSIC: Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar
  19. Plot No. 5 (1981) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  20. Sadgati (1981) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Satyajit Ray
  21. Sazaye Maut (1981) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  22. Shodh (1981) – MUSIC: Shantanu Mohapatra
  23. Ardh Satya (1983) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Ajit Verman
  24. Godam (1984) – MUSIC: Dilip Chitre
  25. Holi (1984) – MUSIC: Rajat Dholakia
  26. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1984) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vanraj Bhatia, ASSISTANT: Kersi Lord
  27. Kanoon Kya Karega (1984) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  28. Khandhar (1984) – MUSIC: Bhaskar Chandavarkar
  29. Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho (1984) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vanraj Bhatia
  30. Party (1984) – No information
  31. Aghaat (1985) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  32. Andhi Gali (1985) – MUSIC: Buddhadev Dasgupta
  33. Damul (1985) – MUSIC: Pt. Raghunath Seth.
  34. Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Basu Chakraborty
  35. Genesis (1986) – MUSIC: Pandit Ravi Shankar
  36. Maati Manas (1986) – BACKGROUND SCORE: T.R. Mahalingam
  37. Massey Sahib (1986) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  38. New Delhi Times (1986) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vanraj Bhatia
  39. Rao Saheb (1986) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Bhaskar Chandavarkar
  40. Zevar (1986) – MUSIC: Salil Chowdhury
  41. Pestonjee (1987) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  42. Pushpak (1981) – BACKGROUND SCORE: L. Vaidyanathan
  43. Andhaa Yudh (1988) – MUSIC BY: Ajit Varman
  44. Salaam Bombay (1988) – MUSIC: L. Subramaniam
  45. Susman (1988) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Vanraj Bhatia
  46. The Perfect Murder (1988) – MUSIC: Richard Robbins
  47. Raakh (1989) – MUSIC: Ranjit Barot
  48. Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989) – MUSIC: Sharang Dev
  49. Ek Din Achanak (1990) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Jyotishka Dasgupta
  50. Kamla Ki Maut (1990) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salil Chowdhury
  51. Naya Zamana Nai Kranti (1990) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Navin Sharma
  52. Nazar (1990) – MUSIC: Vikram Joglekar, D Wood
  53. Dharavi (1991) – MUSIC: Rajat Dholakia
  54. Diksha (1991) – MUSIC: Mohinderjit Singh
  55. Ek Doctor Ki Maut (1991) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  56. Ek Ghar (1991) – MUSIC: L. Vaidyanathan
  57. Kasba (1991) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  58. Antarnaad (1992) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  59. Purush (1992) – BACKGROUND MUSIC: Milind Chitnavis, Tushar Bhatia
  60. Raat (1992) – MUSIC BY: Mani Sharma
  61. Sardar (1993) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  62. Woh Chhokri (1993) – MUSIC: Sapan Jagmohan
  63. Aranyak (1994) – No information
  64. Tarpan (1994) – MUSIC: Rajat Dholakia
  65. Drohkaal (1995) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia, Anjan Biswas, Sunil Kaushik, Taufiq Qureshi
  66. Naseem (1995) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  67. Jaya Ganga (1996) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  68. The Making Of The Mahatma (1996) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  69. Char Adhyay (1997) – MUSIC: Vanraj Bhatia
  70. Rui Ka Bojh (1997) – MUSIC: K. Narayan
  71. Hyderabad Blues (1998) – MUSIC: Dr. Bunty
  72. Kairee (2000) – MUSIC: Bhaskar Chandavarkar
  73. Chandni Bar (2001) – BACKGROUND MUSIC: Raju Singh
  74. Ek Chhoti Si Love Story (2002) – MUSIC SCORE: Arvind Nirmal
  75. Kali Salwar (2002) – MUSIC: Ved Nair
  76. Chokher Bali (2003) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Debojyoti Mishra
  77. Ek Din 24 Ghante (2003) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Sanjay Chakravarthy
  78. Hawa (2003) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Surendra Singh Sodhi
  79. Ab Tak Chhappan (2004) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salim – Sulaiman
  80. Hum Kaun Hain (2004) – MUSIC: Sanjoy Chowdhury
  81. Vaastu Shastra (2004) – MUSIC: Amar Mohile
  82. 15 Park Avenue (2005) – MUSIC: Jyotishka Dasgupta
  83. Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara (2005) – MUSIC: Bappi Lahiri
  84. Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women (2005) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salim – Sulaiman
  85. Naina (2005) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Salim – Sulaiman
  86. Being Cyrus (2006) – MUSIC: Salim – Sulaiman
  87. Gafla (2006) – MUSIC: Kartik Shah
  88. Parzania (2007) – MUSIC: Zakir Hussai, Taufiq Qureshi
  89. The Pool (2007) – MUSIC: Didier Leplae, Joe Wong.
  90. Phoonk (2008) – MUSIC: Bapi – Tutul
  91. Shoot On Sight (2008) – MUSIC: John Altman
  92. Blue Oranges (2009) – MUSIC: Ajay Panchal
  93. Siddharth – The Prisoner (2009) – MUSIC: Sagar Desai
  94. The President Is Coming (2009) – MUSIC: Siddhartha Khosla (Goldspot)
  95. Harud (2010)
  96. Pairon Talle (2010)
  97. Phoonk 2 (2010) – BACKGROUND SCORE: Dharmaraj Bhatt, Rahul Pandirkar
  98. Rokkk (2010)
  99. The Waiting Room (2010)
  100. Dhobi Ghat (2011) – MUSIC: Gustavo Santaolalla
  101. Kshay (2011) – MUSIC: Siddharth Bhatia, Karan Gour
  102. Gangoobai (2013) – MUSIC: Ved Nair
  103. Horror Story (2013)
  104. The Lunchbox (2013) – MUSIC: Max Richter

Interesting information about some of these films:

  • When Naujawan (1937) was released, there was a bit of a backlash and the producers of the film were accused of cheating audiences by not including songs.
  • Rajat Dholakia won the National Film Award for Music Direction for the film Dharavi (1991) – a rare instance of a film with no songs winning a National Film Award for music.
  • Holi did have this song – “Na Koi” – but this film has been included in the songless list since the song is really part of the film and does not have characteristics of a typical, recorded song. Amir Khan, Ashutosh Gowrikar and other actors can be seen in this song.

[Update : Removed “Current” (1991)  from the list. Per @kaurvaki, it had this song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGTjyP6QxpE.]

[Update: Added The Pool, via Ronak Sanghvi.]

[Update: Based on inputs from @p1j – Added Naujawan and Munna. Removed Ek Haseena Thi, Paroma, Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda and Sanshodhan. They have one or more songs. Songs will be identified and added on MySwar.]

[Update: Numbered. Add interesting info.]

[Update: Added Holi (1984) and Raat (1992) based on input by @FagunB. Added interesting info about Holi.]

[Update: Added Andhaa Yudh (1988) and Ab Tak Chhappan (2004) based on input by @FagunB.]

[Update: Added The Lunchbox (2013).]

[Update: Added hyperlinks to MySwar. Added Damul (1985). Also added a number of other albums based on input from @abhisek_s, @singh_dr, @hims_negi, @mpmainka.]