Golden Era of Bollywood: Bollywood Songs songs that do not have tabla, dholak or any other percussion instrument

Tuesday, 20 August 2019

Bollywood Songs songs that do not have tabla, dholak or any other percussion instrument

Last night I was listening the song "Jalte Hain Jis ke Liye" sung by Talat Mahmood from the film Sujata. One interesting point I noted that this song has no sound of Tabla, Dholak or any other percussion instrument.This made me curious to research those songs which do not have any rhythmic instruments.
However, you may be surprised to learn that some of the most popular songs of the Golden era (mostly 50s and 60s) do not have any percussion instrument. Yes, you read that right. There are no percussion instruments in some of the most popular songs.
We all know that Melody and Rhythm are two essential elements of any Hindi film song. Melody is mostly identified with the vocals or the singable part and rhythm is identified with accompanying percussion instruments like Tabla or Bongo or Drums.
You may say that the songs that do not have percussion must be sad or slow songs. But it was not like that.There are some bright, cheerful songs as well that have Nothing but melody.
It is possible to create the rhythm for a song without using percussion instruments. Most composers created rhythm by using guitars, banjo or some other stringed instrument like a Double Bass or a Piano. In film songs, guitar can be played in three ways – as a lead guitar, bass guitar or rhythm guitar.
In the above mentioned song the composer of the song SD Burman usesd Piano to provide rhythm.Similarly SD Burman’s another masterpiece song from Pyaasa – Jaane woh kaise log in which piano supplements guitars and double bass for rhythm.
Hemant Kumar too seems to have a penchant for composing songs without percussion. His lively Bekarar karke from Bees Saal Baad, surprisingly does not have any percussion instruments, very unusual for the situation in the movie.
Here are few songs where the rhythm is provided by a variety of stringed instruments like Double Bass, Guitars and so on. I hope you enjoy these extremely popular Nothing but melody songs.