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Down melody lane

Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

Retro rocks Chinmayi, Anuradha Sriram, Srinivas and Naresh Iyer

Most of today’s film songs sound good on the turntables, and all of yesterday’s on the ears. The full house at the Music Academy on Sunday evening for ‘The Golden Age’ proved that heritage music, film or classical, is near imm ortal.

The audience happily walked along with Srinivas, Anuradha Sriram, Naresh Iyer and Chinmayi down melody lane.

The four singers recreated the magic of the golden era of Hindi film music with the best of Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, Geeta Dutt, Manna Dey, Talat Mehmood, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle and Kishore Kumar. The singers, in all humility, pointed out that it wasn’t easy to step into the shoes of the past masters even for a short period, and match the standards set by them.

Srinivas, he of the earnest voice, who put together the show, began with a K. L. Saigal song, ‘Main kya janoon kya jadoo hai’ (“Zindagi”), as a tribute to the “guru of most singers”.

He followed it up with the soulful Talat Mehmood number from “Sujata”, ‘Jalte hain jiske liye’, managing to bring out the emotions of the incredible lyrics. Though he sang the songs of quite a few singers, he excelled in Kishore numbers such as ‘Kora kaagaz tha ye man mera’ (“Aradhana”), ‘Yeh kya hua’ (“Amar Prem”) and ‘Mehbooba Mehbooba’ (“Sholay”) and ‘Tere mere sapne’ (“Guide”).

The vivacious Anuradha Sriram’s experience in doing live shows was evident in the easy rapport she shared with the audience. She went through four dress changes, each representing an era of melodies, threw teasers to the audience to guess what she was going to sing, and even danced on stage… at the end of it all, the audience was eating out of her hand.

She converted the stage into a very intimate setting for a group of friends, and managed to pass on her infectious love for all the songs rendered to the listeners too. Some of her numbers were the lilting ‘Aayiye meherbaan’ (“Howrah Bridge”), ‘Inhi logon ne’ (“Pakeezah”), ‘Mera naam chin chin choo’ (“Howrah Bridge”) and ‘O sajana’ (“Parakh”).

Then, it was the turn of the curly-haired wonder, Naresh Iyer. He started off soberly enough with ‘Kisi ke muskurahaton pe’ (“Anari”) and ‘Ehsaan tera hoga mujh par’ (“Junglee”) (allowing Anuradha to sing the last para with him because she so loved the song), before discarding his “samathu payyan” image for the rocking ‘Parda hai parda’ (“Amar Akbar Anthony”). There was simply no stopping him after that. The curls bobbed up and down as he jived, and got the audience all charged up too.

Chinmayi has been singing old Hindi numbers since her school days, and started off with a sample of her usual showstopper ‘Kuhu kuhu bole’ (“Suvarna Sundari”), before moving on to ‘Taare rahiyo’ (“Pakeezah”), ‘Jaayiye aap kahaan jaayenge’ (“Mere Sanam”), ‘Tu jahaan’ (“Mera Saaya”) , and the sensuous ‘Bahon mein chale aao’ (“Anamika”).

Once the solos were done with, all the singers moved on to duets. Their chemistry showed, and how! It started off with Anuradha and Naresh matching their voices to ‘Abhi na jao chod kar’ (“Hum dono”), before Anuradha and Chinmayi came together with flourish in the Asha Bhonsle-Shamshad Begum original, ‘Kajra mohabbat wala’ (“Kismat”). Chinmayi and Srinivas rendered the soulful ‘Kora kagaz tha’ (“Aradhana”), before he teamed up with Anuradha for ‘Tere mere milan ki yeh raina’ (“Abhimaan”). Chinmayi and Naresh brought the floor down with the peppy ‘Jaane ja, dhoondta’ (“Jawani Diwani”).

It would have been wonderful if the singers had included more duets in their song-list for the evening. And, Anuradha and Chinmayi could have avoided singing in the higher octave as they sounded a bit shrill.

The foursome got together on stage for two pulsating numbers — ‘Aaja aaja, main hoon pyaar tera’ (“Teesri Manzil”) and ‘Jai jai shiv shankar’ (“Aap Ki Kasam”). The last number saw the youth brigade, Naresh and Chinmayi, mingling with audience and getting people to shake a leg along with them, and what a display it was!

The orchestra from Thiruvananthapuram completed the experience, transporting people back in time, with their mastery over the instruments and the tunes.

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