RMIM Archive Article "281".
From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian
#
# RMIM Archives..
# Subject: Audio of Mughal-e-Azam
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# Posted by: Vish Krishnan (vishk@visigenic.com)
# Addendum by Satish C Kalra
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Audio of Mughal-e-Azam
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There were at least 2 movie prints in circulation (from the mid-late
'70s), one with the two Lata songs, and one without. There are in
fact several audio releases, and most of them DO NOT have "Ai ishq..."
and "humei.n kaash tumse....".
The 4 audio releases I recall are:
1. The LP
2. A 2-pack EMI cassette release with dialogues and movie background music
(lots of sitar pieces by Abdul Halim Jafar Khan). Don't recall the title.
3. An EMI CD Release titled "Selected Hits From ANAARKALI - MUGHAL-E-AZAM
(Serial Number CD PMLP 5112).
4. The new CD release mentioned by Guri is titled "Classic Films -
MUGHAL-E-AZAM"
(Serial number CDF 130075 ADD, as per Guri's message).
A few odd facts re. the above releases:
Releases 2 and 4 are NOT equal. In fact, #2 follows the movie
sequence. It even starts with "main Hindustaan hoon. Himaala meri
sarhado.n ka... etc etc". The recording quality of #2 is a little
questionable. I have never seen the second cassette of Release #2,
and so can't say if this release has all songs.
However, Release 2 does have more sitar interludes. In particular, it
features a "Madhyami" piece. This raaga, according to Abdul Halim
Jaafar Khan, is his own creation. He played it at a campus concert
back when I was in engg school. Had not seen the movie until then,
and then, when I did get around to watching it in a theatre, it was a
pleasant discovery. I don't believe Release #4 has this much sitar,
but I should really listen to it again.
Release #3 has two problems: it is missing 3 songs (the 2 Lata songs
under discussion here, and "prem jogan ban ke.."), AND the song
versions featured are NOT complete.
Release #4 has, by and large, more complete versions of ALL songs,
but even so, they are NOT completely complete!! In particular, 2
songs on this release cause some disappointment. First, "pyaar kiyaa
to Darnaa kyaa.." has a kathak piece right in the beginning,
painstakingly (and some accounts even say painfully) choreographed on
Madhubala. Then the song starts as "insaan kisi se..". This initial
dance piece is missing in Release #4. The LP (Release 1) has it.
Second, at the end of "jab raat hai aisi matwaali..", the movie
features the dance of death, a really nice Malkauns interlude
choreographed and danced by Lacchu Maharaj (or is it Birju Maharaj?).
Release #4 did away with it while the LP has included it.
The dialogues featured in Release #4 have me wondering. It is a well
known fact that song versions in movies are very often different from
those released on audio. But I found that at least some of the
conversation in #4 is not how I remember it from the movie.
Particularly, there is a scene where Murad (Mansingh) says "agar in
dastaavezon par imkaanaat jaari nahin kiye gaye, to sooba-e-ajmer mein
badghamni phailne kaa andeshaa hai..". I remember this line only
because it sounded very funny at that time. Now, in this CD release,
Murad says something else, not totally different, but different
enough. I have a feeling that this was unintentional, and that
EMI/HMV->RPG AND the movie industry have a version control problem in
general.
And finally, about my real favourite song from the movie ("khudaa
nighahbaan ho.."), the song does actually have a preamble + 2 stanzas,
but I have never heard one single version of the song that features
all pieces. Releases 1,2,4 and also the movie have the preamble + the
stanza "uThey janaaza...". And here is where Release 3 scores a
point. The song here has both stanzas, but not the preamble. That
elusive verse goes something like:
hai waqt-e-rukhsat galey lagaa lo,
khataaei.n bhi aaj baksh Daalo
bichhaDne waale ka dil na toDo
zaraa mohabbat se kaam le lo
In the early '60s, when Vividh Bharati went overboard playing these
songs, they always aired the Release 3 version. I did not know about
the preamble until I saw the movie some time in the '70s.
So one day I got the bright idea of splicing the two versions together
to make a my very own copy of the "complete" song. No luck. The two
recordings are not on the exact same key. Release #2 is about a
quarter-note lower. I suppose that when they cut the master discs for
the two releases, the sources were playing at slightly different
speeds!
cheers
vish
dialogues.
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Addendum from Satish Kalra
Without going into the various releases mentioned above, I know one
fact for sure - and that is that in the days of the release of MEA,
the songs used to be released on 78 rpm discs only, which had a time
limit of 3-1/2 minutes, maximum. To accommodate the time cap, the
songs used to be "edited" by HMV, by soemtimes deleting some music
(orchestra) or at others some words or stanzas from the audio
versions. Later on, in the early sixties, when the vinyl LP albums
began to be made in India also, the LP album for MEA was also made, in
various releases such as above. In the one where they have both the
stanzas, they probably chose to eliminate the pre-mukhda lines. In
the movie itself, even when it was released originally in 1960, the
song had only one stanza. A few months later, when the movie
collections began to falter, they added the two Lata songs, and
eliminated the Rafi chorus number "Zindabad, Zindabad, ai mohabbat
zindabad".
This, though, was not the first instance where a song was initially
there in a movie and later cut. As fas as I know, my first known
instance of such a song being deleted from a movie after its intitial
release is from "Paying Guest", where the Geeta Dutt number "Aha ha
ui, la la ui, maza aa gaya aha ha" was in the movie when I saw it on
the release day, but only three days later when I saw the movie again,
it was gone! Further, it is a well known fact that in the
pre-mid-fifties, the songs had to be recorded twice, once for the
movie and second time for the records (78 rpm), again because of the
time constraint. In the early 78 rpm record of the song "Chaand phir
nikla", one of the antaras has the words "jala gaye tan ko baharon ke
saaye, main kya karun haye ke tum na gaaye", where as in the movie and
the later released LP album, the words are "ke tum yaad aaye"!. There
are numerous such instances from those "good old days" that I can
recount.
Satish C. Kalra.
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From the RMIM Article Archive maintained by Satish Subramanian