anonymous and anonymous music arrangers

Many of us grew up watching Hindi movies, glued to transistor radios to listen to our favorites on various playlists. We were staunch fans of this voice, that musician, this lyricist at different stages of our lives. Yet many of us were quite oblivious to a group of men responsible for transforming the original tune into that highly dimensional piece of music, song after song: the arrangers of Hindi film music.

We may have noticed their names—not in big typefaces in the main standalone opening credits, but in fast-rolling credits, among other names. But they certainly never became household names via radio or record jacket info, and certainly didn’t count in the music director-singer-songwriter trinity with any great songs.

It is no surprise then that a Rajya Sabha TV documentary on the composers of the golden age of Hindi film music is aptly titled: No one is anonymous.

My first awakening to his existence was when I attended a screening of a 58-minute film by Ashok Rane on the king of them all, Anthony Gonsalves. This 58-minute documentary became an inspiration for some of us to go down the proverbial rabbit hole in search of more. We got the RSTV documentary; original and comprehensive work Behind the scenes: Making music at Mumbai’s film studios Gregory D. by booth; There are interviews online and some archival material.

You’ll see they were mostly Goan names: Anthony Gonsalves, Chic Chocolate, Chris Perry, Frank Fernand, Sebastian D’Souza, Alfred Rose, Remo Fernandes, Datta Naik, Dattaram Wadkar, Jaykumar Partey, Manohari Singh, Kersee Lord… they were Men who ventured into the Bombay film industry with their classical as well as jazz training in their late 40s and early 50s. The timing was perfect, almost scripted.

As today’s young arranger and composer Ananda Sahasrabuddhe explains it, music directors in the industry began to preface songs: a piece that would introduce the ambiance and mood of the song, “Mahol Banna”, as in musical plays. it was done. While earlier these were purely Indian instruments, the tabla, sitar, sarangi and harmonium, with the arrival of these composers new sounds were worked on: shehnai, trumpet, sax, accordion, violin, piano. All these had to be used effectively keeping in mind the requirement of the film and the situation of the song. The arrangers, having evolved as the musicians themselves, re-imagined the music director’s original tune, and arranged it all to produce a well-rounded, filled version.

Osmosis was nothing short of celestial. Hindustani singers and instrumentalists learned to write musical scores, where at first they only rehearsed until they got it right, everything by ear. Western arrangers learned about Hindustani ragas as well as traditional ornamentation such as khatka, meend, murki, gamak, kan. These two streams of music-makers weave together, creating never-before-heard music that lasts decades later.

It’s a mind-expanding exercise today, to ‘reverse engineer’ any of your favorite songs and listen to preludes and intervals, counter-melody, harmony, even the most hard-core Raag-based songs are also brought in. The influential phalanx of musicians originally trained in Western music. Anand Sahasrabuddhe is doing a series of introductions to several arrangers as part of Zoom-based ‘radio-show-like’ events organized by membership-based entity, Nostalgiana. Sahasrabuddhe’s talks have done another eye-opener.

Here is another entry. “I speak for many like myself: for a long time, many of us assumed that the arranger was just someone who knew different instruments, and simply pieced them together, or sourced them. done, or agented for them, or rounded them up, and brought them to the music director or to a recording studio. We couldn’t be more mistaken and uninformed in this interpretation of the word.”

This anonymity has a lot to do with the fact that it was not a tradition to attribute them. It was only in the late 50s that names began to appear on the screen, credited as ‘assistants’ or ‘administrators’. Needless to say, they didn’t own any copyrights and didn’t get any residual income if a song was a hit. Furthermore, only a handful of music directors actively mention her by name and freely admit that she composed only one song’s Mukhda and Antara. Everything else that held the song firmly above all else was the work of the arrangers. A good arranger, like a good text or film editor, never leaves a lasting impression or enhances a song. This could also possibly be one of the reasons why the songs have not been associated or associated with the name of arrangers in the minds of the people.

While one of them was the Milky Way, the name Anthony Gonsalves is most reverently taken, even today, as ‘Grandfather’ of the Founding Fathers. His range and reach, his willingness and ability to learn and learn, his skill, his association with Hindustani greats like Ravi Shankar and Ram Narayan, are things of legend.

Many of us Hindi film music lovers often aspire to be a fly-on-the-wall in the composing room and recording studio of great singer-composer-songwriter combination. Once the arranger enters your life (albeit late), you have all the more reason to be that fly: to see a building building up, and an entire universe being created, this is a great Hindi movie song. .

A Very Short Listening List: Listen for preludes, intervals, harmonic layering, counter-melody, and even the simplest of songs with a seemingly insignificant complexity:

‘Come to come’ ( Palace,

‘We are in your eyes’ ( thirsty,

‘We are the ones who burn in love’ ( jalik,

‘Know how Akhiya got lost in dreams’ ( Anuradha,

‘Jyoti Kalash Chaleke’ ( sister-in-law bangles,

‘Main Dil Hoon Ik Armaan Bhara’ ( untoward,

‘I’m thinking this’ ( reality,

‘The season has come Rangen Baazi Hai Kahin melodious’ ( dholki,

‘Mausam Hai Ashikana’ ( Pakeezah,

The author is a novelist, consultant and music lover.