![]() ![]() I was perhaps about nine years old when I watched CID, and I still remember being entranced by Boojh mera kya naav re. ![]() Boojh mera kya naav re ( CID, 1956): This song appears at the top of the list for a simple reason: because it is my earliest memory of the voice of Shamshad Begum (though at the time I didn’t know the name of the singer). As always, these songs are all from pre-70s films that I’ve watched, and are in no particular order.ġ. This time, then, to commemorate her birth centenary, here are ten of my favourite solos of hers, from Hindi cinema. Six years ago, in the middle of a month I’d devoted to regional Indian cinema, Shamshad Begum passed away, and I took time out to pay tribute to her-in the form of a list of r egional language songs that she’d sung. It’s not as if I’ve never done a Shamshad Begum post on this blog. Even then, through the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s (when she finally stopped singing playback for cinema), Shamshad Begum got to sing some of Hindi cinema’s most enduring hits. ![]() Mehboob Khan, who brought Shamshad Begum to Bombay in 1941 and gave her the chance to sing in films like Khazanchi (1941), paved the way for her to soar to the top of the charts: her popularity peaked between 1940-55, and she was eventually only displaced by the Mangeshkar juggernaut. ![]() Thanks to a very conservative father (who had insisted she wear a burqa even to sing!), Shamshad Begum had to finally decline the role and focus on her singing. In 1937, she began singing with All India Radio Lahore, and this proved a breakthrough-such a breakthrough that Shamshad Begum was offered a role as an actress and even bagged it after a screen test. In the teeth of parental opposition, she was helped by an uncle who got her an audition with Ghulam Haider. Her prowess as a singer, however, came to the fore very early, and by the time she was 10 years old she was singing in family marriages and religious functions. Music director Naushad was born a hundred years ago lyricists Kaifi Azmi and Rajendra Krishan were born a hundred years ago and two of Hindi cinema’s most popular playback singers-Manna Dey and Shamshad Begum-were also born in 1919, less than a month apart.īorn in Lahore on April 14 th, 1919, the day after the horrific Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar (which is just about 50 km from Lahore), Shamshad Begum never had any formal training in music. This is an important year when it comes to Hindi film music-because 2019 marks the birth centenary of some of classic Hindi cinema’s greatest in the field of music. ![]()
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