HYDERABAD: Going beyond popular star faces onscreen, a motley bunch of music enthusiasts of the group ‘Dakshin Dhwani’ endeavour to honour all those who are involved in the creation of a hit Hindi film song from the lyricist to the film director, on their birth/death anniversaries through their music.
‘A song becomes an immortal classic, not just because of the hero or the heroine singing it on screen but because it is a combined success of the efforts put in by the lyricist, playback singers, music director and importantly, the film director who foresaw its need in the first place’.
This is the unifying motto behind the Hyderabad-based group of music enthusiasts who go by the name Dakshin Dhwani. Since last October, when they broke new ground with their maiden programme on Oct 13, coinciding with the death anniversary of legendary crooner Kishore Kumar, this group has been regular and active. In the last 10 months, they have put into action this idea of theirs over four more events held across various venues in the city, including the hot spots like Lamakaan and Phoenix Arena.
‘We realised that by paying tributes to the erstwhile demigods of the film industry who are no more, we are denying the due meant for the real creators of film songs which have shaped our lives all through our existence,” says Dr S Viswanathan, a die-hard film music lover. This was the beginning for the path-breaking exercise. We put together a database of the big names who have had an overwhelming presence from the ‘40s and who are no more around’ informed Prabha Naresh, who painstakingly included details of all the lyricists, playback singers, music directors and film directors through extensive data mining on the Net.
The vetting of information was done with care to the maximum extent, as the problem was unavailability of enough inputs here and there.‘The audience heard us out whenever we took time to tell them about our efforts and added their own information also’ says T Balakrishnan, a die-hard Mohammed Rafi fan and a music enthusiast who melts at the very mention of writers like Shakeel Badayuni and Shailendra, who gave immortal classics in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
“Presently we are all busy with the forthcoming event on August 24 where 10 celebrities from Hrishikesh Mukherjee to Khemchand Prakash to HS Rawail will be remembered for their unique contributions’ adds Kalpana Balan, who is rehearsing her numbers for the Thursday event at Lamakaan. Unique indeed, to go beyond the status quo and come up with a thanksgiving effort to all those greats who have made our film world such a popular and appealing one.