“Jee Haan, Behanon Aur Bhaiyon”
This morning I woke up to Ameen Sayani’s voice. I thought the clock had turned back by a couple of decades. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. But, then, it was his voice. The ‘jee haan, behanon or bhaiyon’ caricaturized by so many pretenders over the years seemed original.
Unmistakably so!
I looked around to find it was my music system. And, it came back to me. A couple of weeks back I had bought the 5 CD set of Ameen Sayani’s latest labor of love – Geetmala Ki Chhaon Mein – comprising songs that didn’t feature among the top songs of the year in Ameen Sayani’s wildly popular countdown show title Binaca Geetmala. The CD cover promised a lot; anecdotes, rare interviews and song flashes up to the year 1955. I bought it, stored it on my system and forgot about it. Till this morning, when the shuffle mode thought it appropriate for Ameen Sayani to be brought into forefront. It seemed like Wednesday 8 PM all over again at Radio Ceylon ShortWave 25 Meter band (ok, may be you heard it at 31 Meter or 41 Meter. For me it was 25 M SW, always).
I may be getting ahead of my story.
How and why Radio Ceylon (or its later version the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation, SLBC) became the default choice for quality music of generations of Indians is a story in itself. Right after independence, AIR, the public broadcaster in India, took on the mantle of educating and informing the teeming masses. It pointedly left out entertainment out of its portfolio of responsibilities based on Pt. Nehru’s vision of what a public broadcaster ought to be in a poor country like India. Intentions pure as driven snow. But how do you quench the thirst for film music that had become the staple form of entertainment for the masses. In the meantime, in a fortunate twist of fate, Radio SEAC (South East Asia Command) which was established to entertain British troops stationed in South Asia shifted to Ceylon after the British left the region. The infrastructure, the quality of equipment and the location meant Radio Ceylon had a head-start over other stations. Unencumbered by any restriction on commercial format, Radio Ceylon embraced artists and programmes of all kinds and soon became the single stop for all music based programmes in the subcontinent.
A generation of Indians grew up listening to legends like Jimmy Bharucha or Greg Roszkowszki playing the latest Beatles numbers or introducing the Rolling Stones to pimply teenagers across the land. Bobby Taleyarkhan, legendary cricket commentator (who passed away almost twenty years back and had an entire section devoted to his obituary in Sportsworld), and Alyque Padamsee made their names as Radio Ceylon broadcasters. Balraj Dutt (later Sunil Dutt) began his career as an announcer and other legendary Radio artistes like Gopal Sharma and Vijay Kishore Dubey made their mark on the station. However, arguably, the programme that defined Radio Ceylon to millions of Indians, especially in Jhumri-talaiyaa and Rajnandgaon (two towns that owe their popularity solely to Radio), was Binaca Geetmala. And the iconic voice behind it – Ameen Sayani.
Ameen’s elder brother, Hameed Sayani was already a popular radio artist on Radio Ceylon when Ameen was given the opportunity to host, produce and script a show of his own in 1952. Ameen had little idea what he was getting into. His Hindi, as he himself admits, was a little suspect. Initially, Binaca Geetmala started off as a show which would play seven songs from the pre-1952 era and would invite listeners to rank the seven songs and send it over. The listener whose ranking matched the popular ranking most closely would be awarded a jackpot, a grand sum of Rs. 100. That was quite a sum during those days.
This format continued till 1954 by when the show had gained enormous following with about 60,000 mails every week. In 1954, Ameen Sayani, changed Binaca Geetmala, to a countdown program, the first of its kind for Hindi film songs. Soon, ‘hit parade’, ‘paaydaan’ and the bugle came to define popular Hindi film music. The first song to feature as #1 song on the weekly countdown was Talat’s (fittingly for a Talat bhakt like me) Taxi Driver number, “Jaiyen To Jaiyen Kahan”. Within years, Binaca Geetmala became the most powerful source of information about the success of music of a film. Ameen Sayani maintained a free and fair model of assessing the song’s popularity. In the initial days it was based on the actual sale of records collated across music stores in the country and later it was combined with the requests received. As was expected, there were disgruntled music directors and producers who leveled charges of favoritism against the programme. So, during the late 50s, an ombudsman was created to audit and sing-off the weekly list as fair. GP Sippy was the first to head it and later BR Chopra took on the mantle – a reflection of the extent of power that the show wielded.
Sometime in the late 50s, AIR saw the light of the day (and the money flowing through Radio Ceylon), Finance Minister CD Deshmukh and I&B Minister Keskar finally prevailed over Panditji and introduced Vividh Bharati. But the popularity of Geetmala was such that after a while it appeared on Vividh Bharati as well in a 30 mins slot. From 1952 to 1994, Ameen Sayani made the Wednesday 8 PM – 9 PM slot his own. Shrota Sanghs (listeners’ club), Paaydaan, Sartaaj Geets (those which were played for 16 weeks, later 25 weeks) became common terms of reference while discussing Hindi film music. At its peak, Geetmala was believed to have an audience of about 20 crores; a figure seemingly tad exaggerated but not entirely implausible. Ameen Sayani became the voice of film industry through umpteen trailers, hosting of film shows, appearing in films and the many programmes on radio. Anyone mimicking a radio announcer would just have to say ‘jee haan, behanon aur bhaiyon’ in that plum rounded voice to have the audience interested.
In popular culture ‘Behnon aur Bhaiyon’ and Dharamendra’s ‘Kutte, Main Tera Khoon Pee Jaoonga’ don’t require a context. The moment you say those lines people know exactly what you are getting at.
Video, eventually, killed the Radio star. By 1992, radio was almost in terminal decline and after 42 long years the Geetmala, as we knew it, ended. Sporadic attempts to revive it have since been made but to no avail. Ameen Sayani, in his mid 70s, still works out of his Colaba studio and based on the evidence of SaReGaMa’s ‘Geetmala Ki Chhaon Mein’ hasn’t lost any of his enthusiasm.
That brings me to the 5 CD set that triggered all of this off. I have often been critical of SaReGaMa’s efforts at promoting Hindi film music. They have ignored a large number of lesser known gems at the cost of rehashing the same songs in multiple different CD versions of great artists. This has resulted in a standard list of fifty songs that a reasonably interested listener is acquainted of from any artist. That does no justice to the great names of the golden era of Hindi film music. But I must thank them, grudgingly, for this effort with Ameen Sayani. This is a collector’s set with interview snippets of stars (Kishore talking about his first meeting with Dada Burman and then imitating him while singing ‘kaun nagariya’), flashes of the songs from paaydan 16 to 1 in the years 1954 and 1955, many other pieces of trivia and, of course, the songs that didn’t make to the annual countdown but which deserved to (which is the reason for the title of the album). In short, it’s a must buy. And, lip smackingly, Ameen uncle has promised Vol 6 – 10 shortly.
All said and listened to, the one thing that struck me again and which reconfirmed a long-held belief was the relative position of songs in the ‘paaydaan’ even in those years when we thought the audience was more discerning of good music. While the 50s had uniformly superior music in films than any other decade in Hindi cinema history, the audience still contrived to choose the relatively ‘massy’ numbers over the ‘classy’ ones. Countdowns bring out the worst in human beings, I suppose.
Lastly, for some strange reason each one of the 5 CDs show some strange labels when I play them on my music system. Instead of throwing up the album and the song name on the display panel, SaReGaMa takes us on a delightful world music tour. So CD #1 has “Gentle Persuasion, Canon in D” showing up on display panel when you have Lata and Mukesh singing “Jaane Na Nazar” from Aah, CD #2 has FatBoy Slim, CD # 3 has Fabio and Grooverider, Cd # 4 Laurent Garnier LiveFuse and CD #5 has ‘On The Beach’ (possibly Neil Young’s album).
It’s a bit bizarre hearing Ameen uncle’s stories about Noor Jehan and Surendra, listening to ‘Aawaz De Kahan Hai Tu’ and then seeing FatBoy Slim on the panel.
SaReGaMa never disappoints, does it?
Tags: Ameen Sayani, Geetmala, Hit Parade, Paaydaan, Radio Ceylon
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
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Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
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Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
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Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
great article subrat-da. WOW… hope the 5-set CD is freely available. coz, if it is, its gonna play at my place tomorrow. thts for sure.
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“jee haan, behanon aur bhaiyon’ in that plum rounded voice” — probably the most apt description of ammen’s voice. gosh, its playing in my head right now…
typo: it should be Ameen, not Ammen
While I was a kid T.V ( D.D ) was already active but inspite of that Binaca Geetmala was a weekly routine for me.Ameen Sayani’s voice is legendary & will remain evergreen for me.
seems to me like a Nostalgia week in PFC, with the old music video post and now this…..now that you talk about short wave I remember the old days ,with the proliferation of mobile phone based radios the short wave has effectively died coz it requires a monstrous antennae length ,but mark my words ,when doomsday comes short wave will be the only thing that will connect this world ,and the world will again remember Ameen Sayani.
Subrat, thanks for bringing on the nostalgia. This was the mother of all countdown shows and though it’s been gone for a long time, it still doesn’t have a present day rival in terms of popularity. Even the toothpaste (Binaca) has disappeared off the shelves of our grocery stores.
But the voice remains…and so do the memories of wednesday nights.
Hi all! What is the first Paidaan No. 1 you remember in Binaca Geet Mala? Mine was Daffli Wale Daffli Bajaa (Sargam).
Haan, So??? Matlab, Kya??? What exactly are you trying to say here? U bought CD and all that rock n jazz n classics, SO???
PFC surely going in a reverse way.
@Valuable-Junk:
What an apt pseudonym you have second word onwards.sarcasms aside,What is the direction you think is the right direction?
I liked this article.
Subrat,
Had you hold it for a day or two, you would have seen my post on the same
.. Binaca/Cibaca is certainly one of my best childhood friends… Have followed it religiously for years… The GKCM is a trip down memory lane and an excellent effort for Binaca fans.. Ameen Sayani saab would be coming up with 4 Sets (of 5 CDs each) subsequently.. The next set is scheduled to be released earlier next month.
skd: Mine is also Dafli Wale
Subrat — as always, another great fulfilling post… Will surely buy the set…
–now some nostalgic bs–
I used to carry our ‘Philips’ radio outside in the open for a good reception… there was a (beautiful) girl living on the top floor of our building… used to join me sometimes for Binaca… ;-)
saatvi payadan par ‘chandnii raat hain…’
‘Superman’ — if you are reading… can you please turn the earth clockwise (w.r.t North Star) 20 times ???
@Satya,
I used to give out phillips radio a good smack or two as I tried to listen to sangeet sarita, bhoole bisre geet and Sainik bhaiyyon ke liye in the evening…
tuning to Radio Ceylon was the hardest….
At 7.55 sharp my dad midway through his morning shaving routine would be turning the blasted knobs and cursing if he missed the Sehgal song….always heard with lots of intereference.
anybody remember the Bournvita quiz contest anchored by one of the sayanis…???
Superb…grew up…almost everyone in the family..dad, mom, uncle, aunt, etc on Ameen sir…
Later Binaca became Cibaca Geet Mala..that is when i guess i started hearing it regularly…used to get a break of one hour during this programme from studies…no other programme was able to do that :-)