Golden Era of Bollywood: C Ramachandra’s musical genius

Friday 12 January 2018

C Ramachandra’s musical genius

Born on 12 January 1918 in Puntamba, a small town in Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra.C Ramchandra studied music under Vinayakbua Patwardhan at "Gandharva Mahavidyalaya" and also under Shankarrao Sapre of Nagpur where he studied music alongside Vasantrao Deshpande.He was one of the pillars of the music of Golden Era of Hindi cinema.He along with Lata and Talat gave us some of the Immortal Songs.The highly popular patriotic song "Aye Mere Watan Ke Logo", which was sung by Lata Mangeshkar and penned by poet Pradeep, was a composition of Ramachandra. He himself was a great singer. For his career as an occasional playback singer he used only his surname Chitalkar. He sang some renowned and unforgettable duets with Lata such as Kitna haseen hai mausam in film Azad or Shola Jo bhadke in Albela.
He wanted to become Hero, while trying to do bit movie roles to support him found himself in Mumbai, and was introduced to another Maharashtrian bit actor called Bhagvan Palav. As the luck would have it, struggling Bhagvan had secured some finance from an investor to produce a movie in, hold your breath, TAMIL language (An Indian language mostly spoken in the state of Tamilnad in South India) and asked Ramchandra to direct the music for it. He debuted as a music director in two TAMIL films "Jayakkodi" and later in "Vanamohini".
Later same Bhagvan, who by now had become Ram’s close buddy, was instrumental in providing him first HINDI film, to direct its music, Sukhi Jiwan, in 1942. In between Ram did bit work here and there including the fact that he became a Harmonium accompanist for Minerva composers Bindu Khan and Habib Khan. He often got opportunities to sing and act in Marathi films of those days.
He received public notice as a good composer in Bhagwan Dada's "Sukhi Jeevan", and established a long association that culminated with the musical box office hit "Albela".In Sukhi Jeevan the famous song written by Iqbal Mohammed and translated in Hindi by the famous poet Pradeep , “Sare Jahan Se Acha Hindustan Hamara” in Sukhi Jeevan had its tune composed by none other than C Ramchandra.
C. Ramachandra's biggest success as a music composer was the 1953 movie Anarkali starring Beena Roy in the title role and Pradeep Kumar. The songs that he composed for this movie are today legendary. Songs of this movie like "Yeh Zindagi Usiki Hai", "Mujhse Mat Poochh Mere Ishq Main Kya Rakha Hai", "Mohabbat Aisi Dhadkan Hai", "Jaag Dard-e-Ishq Jaag" etc. went on to become huge hits and were also highly acclaimed as masterpieces.
Some of His Immortal Songs