I was pretty sure that I would find it out on Google.īut that was a miscalculation-probably a little over-confidence-on my part. I, however, ensured that I got the name right: Lucila. I did not even dare to ask him who she was, because of the way he was moving from one topic to another with a lot of zeal and I thought this would have been an interruption. While I do not consider myself to be an authority on Hindi film music, I do follow it and can say with some pride that my knowledge is better than average. But it sounded a little Western, so I changed it like this,” he said demonstrating it immediately on the Harmonium which accompanied him right through the entire interview, “to make it sound more Indian.” He, of course, vehemently denied any major contribution from Kalyanji and reiterated that the music was played on Harmonium by him, while acknowledging that Kalyanji did accompany on Clavoline.īut then he added something that caught my attention. (I actually did a post, Ravi: The Master of Situational Songs, based on some interesting perspective that I got from that interview). Nevertheless, I could not resist asking the question to the maestro himself when I met him in November 2011, just a few months before his death. There has been a lot of debate on who between Ravi and Kalyanji should get more credit for the piece? Kalyanji fans believe that he created the been sound on Clavioline, an electronic keyboard instrument, a predecessor to today’s synthesizers, which he introduced to the Indian audience in that film, though now, it is known that the sound was actually created on Harmonium by Ravi, while Kalyanji indeed supported on the Clavoline. Kalyanji, of course, paired with his brother Anandji to emerge as a popular duo, and they were active right upto the 80s A few tunes of his first film Vachan ( O babu babu, jaanewale babu and Chanda mama door ke) went on to become all-ime hits. Nagin, in fact, was one of the last films Ravi did as an assistant to Hemant da, for he started scoring music independently soon afterwards, tasting success early. The cover of the record released by HMV gives credit to Ravi and Kalyanji, who were part of Hemant Kumar’s team but later went on to became successful music composers themselves.
There has been a lot of discussion on who created that piece. Much of the long-term popularity of the song was, of course, because of the beautiful sound of been. But that shows how much Man dole was etched in memory that even someone like Sayani could get confused! In fact, when HMV (now Saregama) released a special album on the occasion of 25 years of the program, Ameen Sayani, who presented the program actually included this song as the top ranked song of 1954, albeit by mistake. Myths apart, the popularity of the song is proven by the fact that it ranked at No 2 in annual Binaca Geetmala Hit Parade in 1954, the ultimate barometer of popularity of Hindi film songs at that time. This caught the imagination of people so much that there were so many myths that got created around this-the most popular being that snakes “were attracted” by it and entered the film theatres when the song was playing! What adds to the charm of the song is the been music played in the song.
Man dole mera tan dole from the 1954 film Nagin remains one of the most popular songs in Hindi cinema.