Golden Voices of Yesteryears

                                Golden Voices of  Yesteryears

Kishore Kumar (Bengali, 1929 – 13 October 1987), was an Indian film playback singer and actor, composer and director. He was one of the leading singers in the Hindi film music industry between 1969 and 1987. He also achieved notable success as a lyricist, composer, producer, director, screenwriter and scriptwriter. He sang in many Indian languages including Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam and Oriya. He was honoured with several awards, including eight Film fare awards.

Mukesh ( Mukesh Chand Mathur) (1923-1976), with his mellifluous voice, captured the imagination of not just the Indian audience, but music lovers in many other parts of the world. He also sang Ghazals. His first song was “dil hi bujha hua ho to” as an actor singer for Nirdosh. He received the National award in 1974 for the best play back singer for his song “Kai baor yun bhi dekha hai” in the film Rajnigandha

Mohammed  Rafi (1924-1980) was  one of India's greatest playback singers, whose career spanned four decades. During his long career, he performed an estimated 26,000 songs in many Indian languages including Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Maghi, Mathili, Konkani and Telugu. He was effective in every type of singing including 'Bhajjans' and 'Qawwalies'. He also recorded a few English and Persian songs. He is primarily remembered, however, for his Hindi-Urdu songs. Rafi was one of the leading male singers in the Hindi film music industry, and won several awards including Padma Shri and 5 National Awards.

Hemant Kumar (1920-1989) was one of the most prolific singers of the 1950s & 60s. He was also an accomplished composer and added to Indian film music his interpretations of Rabindra Sangeet. He scored music for films such as Anandmath, Nagin, Kohraa and Bees Saal Baad. In Nagin he used the clavichord played by Kalyanji to reproduce the sound of the snake charmer's been. The evergreen song Man dole mera tan dole... is one of the finest presentations by him. An integral part of the golden era of the Hindi film music, Hemant will be remembered forever for his melodies.