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Old tunes, new forum
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Nostalgia will be in the air when an online community of old Hindi film music lovers meet in the city from April 21 to 23
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GOLDEN OLDIES You can access some rare information on old Hindi film music legends through the Internet
Does this old Hindi film number sung by Manna Dey ring a bell? "Tero Naam Omkar Gawat Sab Baar Baar Laaj Keri Tere Haath Jag Ke O Khewaiya Udr Tananan Dhim."
Or did you know that Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle in Kala Pani have used a very catchy theme tune from the Woody Woodpecker cartoons at the very beginning of "Achcha Ji Main Haari"?
Now where did I pick this stuff up? Well, it so happens that a few buffs have come together and created an online forum where they can get answers to their most nagging questions on old Hindi film music, dig up interesting facts about the music and, more importantly, try to ensure that the music does not fade away with antediluvian LPs and cassettes. It is a Usenet/newsgroup (see box) on the Internet called rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM).
The origin
RMIM was started in 1993 and it is an open group where any Net user can post messages. Its name spread round the world a long time ago and has users almost everywhere, and they now organise meetings to meet up in the real world. The trend, it seems, first started in New Jersey where users within driving distance caught up with each other and today meetings happen everywhere. And our city will have its RMIM meet from April 21 to 23 bringing together users from Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Bhopal and Hyderabad.
Browsing through the posts on RMIM, it is hard to believe that this many people who still take time out for music, some of which over three decades old. So, I set about trying to get in touch with a few of the users to get a sampling of the passion that drives them.
One of the first to respond to my emails was a user, Pavan Jha, from Jaipur. He says he came across RMIM in 1997 when he first started using the Internet in Jaipur. "After just a few days of interaction I found I had come to the right place and met the right kind of people I was looking for. RMIM became my first home on Internet with a family of like-minded friends. Let me give you an example: prior to the Net family, I had friends but sometimes even after spending a lot of time together we never knew if we had common interests. Sometimes you never interacted on many things even though the friends may have originated from your family, colony, school, college or workplace. But on a group like RMIM, its other way round, you interact on common interest first and then make friends."
Deepak Sabnis is another user based on the west coast of the U.S. He says RMIM pre-dates the Internet and he has been involved with it almost from the time of its inception.
"It is really a part of Usenet, which existed before Netscape came out with its web browser. I used to peruse one of the early groups called soc.culture.indian. That newsgroup got too noisy and some people proposed creation of RMIM. I voted for its creation and have been a member ever since."
One of the things that Sabnis and Jha are serious about like all the other RMIM members is to identify old numbers and try to trace them to either music companies or collectors. In fact Sabnis says it is his "pet peeve" that Indians don't care about preserving their culture.
Preserving the arts
"There is a great need to have the equivalent of U.S. Library of Congress in India. Yes, we have the Film Institute in Pune and other national archives but they don't have adequate funding to support preservation of art. There is also a need for easy public access to what they have in their archives. All India Radio is probably sitting on a treasure trove of music they broadcast over the years. Every once in a while I see a CD at Rhythm House that seems to come from that archive. How about digitising what they have and making it available to the public? Publish on tapes, CDs and make it available for download on the Internet (on a paid basis, of course). RPG Enterprises own the copyright to old Hindi film music. But they don't care about the quality of CDs they put on the market," he argues.
Jha adds: "Not much of music cataloguing has been taken up with information technology, but on RMIM, a lot of people have contributed to come up with a lyrics store of more than 10,000 songs."
While Sabnis attends RMIM meets on the U.S. west coast, he says he can't make it to the Bangalore meet for the obvious reasons — time and distance.
But Jha says he is looking forward to attending the meet here. "There is a song by Gulzar from the film Do Dooni Chaar. `Hawaaon Pe Likh Do Hawaaon Ke Naam, Hum Anjaan Pardesiyon Ka Salaam.' I found out the meaning of the lines only when I interacted with people on RMIM. People without faces, but know each other like a close friend and share a common interest. Sometimes they help you with something that you've been searching for long. Who would not like to meet such people in person? I am very sure the first time I meet someone I have known for quite long but haven't seen, a million dollar smile will be exchanged and a couple of songs might hummed at that instant."
To access RMIM, go to groups.google.com and key in rec.music.indian.misc. To post messages you must register.
Usenet groups
Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems. It was established in 1980, a decade before the World Wide Web. It was originally conceived as a "poor man's ARPANET (the predecessor to the Internet)," offering mail and file transfers, as well as announcements through newly developed news software.
Today, almost all Usenet traffic is carried over the Internet. The current format and transmission of Usenet articles is very similar to that of Internet email messages. However, whereas email is usually used for one-to-one communication, Usenet is a one-to-many medium. The articles that users post to Usenet are organised into topical categories called newsgroups. When a user subscribes to a newsgroup, the news client software keeps track of articles the user has read. Google now provides a web-based interface to Usenet groups.
ANAND SANKAR
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