JOIN USAll ears to melodious nostalgic numbers
Bollywood legend and Dada Saheb Phalke Awardee Manoj Kumar was felicitated by Parvathamma Rajkumar, wife of late Dr Raj Kumar, in a ceremony held at Ambedkar Bhawan recently. The programme called Madhur Sangeeth, was a musical journey from North to South comprising melodious old Hindi and Kannada film songs.
Other than Manoj Kumar, the evening also saw the presence of Hindi film singer Om Chathurvedi, Kannada playback singers Priyadarshini, Chandrika Gururaj, Ramesh, Vishnu and Dr Saleem.
The evening started out with a small ceremony, wherein Dr Manoj Kumar was honoured for his contribution to the cinema. This was followed by the musical programme which comprised Hindi hits from some of Manoj Kumar’s movies. The songs included hit numbers such as Main na bhoolunga, Ek pyaar ka nagma hai and Jaane kahan gaye woh dhin among the many other lovely melodious songs.
Om Chathurvedi, who is said to be today’s Mukesh, wooed the crowd when he sang the songs Deewano se and Chand se mehbooba which received a lot of applause from the audience. While there was no denying that the mood for the evening was set, it only got better from there.
This was followed by the duet Mehmoob Mere by Chandrika Gururaj and Om Chathurvedi which reminded everyone of the era gone by and the effect was such that some even screamed aloud after the song was over. But the real high point was when singer Priyadarshini gushed on the stage about how much she admired Manoj Kumar as a young child.
“I watched his movies 50 times to just see him smile,” she said before breaking into the O P Nayyar song Haule haule chalo more saajana.
Another song from her, which touched many hearts, was Naina Barse from the movie Woh kaun thi. But the Kannada films were not left behind and the event saw hit songs from the movies of Rajkumar, Vishnuvardan, Ambarish and V Ravichandran being performed.
Songs such as Huttidhare, Maamaravello, Kannada Mannanu Maribeda, Doni Saagali, Ee Sambhashane among many others reminded everyone of the evergreen music of Kannada cinema. An added attraction was the colourful eye-catching dancers who performed to the live music and made the event even memorable.
The evening surely brought memories of the old days when melodies were sweet and music simple.