"Pacific Duets - VIII"

 #429

         Song:   yahaan badla wafa ka bewafaai ke siva kya hai
                 mohabbat karke bhi dekhi mohabbat mein bhi dhoka hai

         Film:   Jugnu (1947)
         Singer: Mohammed Rafi, Noor Jehan
         Music:  Feroze Nizami
         Lyrics: ?
         *ing:   Dilip Kumar, Noor Jehan
 

 Two weeks... that's one long, delinquent lapse in ATMJH:-( The alibi is a
 small but incorrigible company in Wisconsin, but let's not go into that. My
 apologies for the hiatus.

 Anyway, while the powers that be deliberate over the time domains of ATMJH
 and YGYR, I shall retain the current settings and amble into the late 40s
 with this fairly well-known melody. Going by one implicit definition, pacific
 duets are generally set in a joyous, positive ambience, which would
 invalidate today's selection. Nevertheless, this placid fragment of music,
 exquisitely composed and rendered, stays true to all the musical connotations
 of "pacific"; that being the case, I decided to forge ahead.

 Digest this: there is only one basic, recurrent musical piece that almost
 every line of the song is set in (with occasionally meandering alaaps here
 and there), somewhat similar (in theory) to Bruce Springsteen's 'Secret
 Garden', from the Jerry Maguire soundtrack. Setting a song in this type of a
 repetitive musical structure and making sure it does not sound monotonous is
 quite remarkable. The final jewels in this musical crown, though, are Rafi
 and Noor Jehan. Rafi's early (40s) voice is always a pleasure to listen to,
 no matter what he sings. It had a richer, more resonant timbre then (as is
 evident in songs like "yeh zindagi ke mele", "tera khilona toota baalak",
 etc.) which somehow dwindled in the 50s and thereafter (OK RAFIans, let it
 rip :-)). And he pairs up with one of the sweetest voices of all time here,
 to deliver a truly timeless classic.

 This brings me to the Case of the Elusive Lyricists: no one seems to know who
 penned the songs of this popular movie. Actually, IIRC there are four
 lyricists for this movie (of whom I don't remember a single one), and the
 mystery was the distribution of the Jugnu tracks across these four (HFGK does
 not mention it either). Anyone have any info on this ? I'm particularly
 curious to know the lyricist of my favorite Noor Jehan solo from Jugnu: "aaj
 ki raat saaz-e-dil-e-purdard na chhed", the song with the most beautifully
 sung line ever :-).