Presenting Naushad : Part 5

Struggle and Early Years in Bombay....

Naushad had quite a struggling start to his career in Hindi Film Industry. The early displeasure from his father notwithstanding, Naushad made a decision to come to Bombay to start his career as musician. The early days were tough as he had neither any prior experience in films nor he knew anyone in the music fraternity. It was 1937.

As his very first assignment, he got a chance to play Piano with music composer Ustaad Jhande Khan. It is important to note that Naushad used to play Piano in his early days and knew about Western Classical Music. Bach, Beethoven were names he would admire! So much talent and skill at such an early age! This broad knowledge of music helped him - he had acquired the music of dehat (rural India) through his travels, had learnt Hindustani Classical Music and now could also play Western instruments.

One of the biggest movie making houses of pre-independent India was called Film City. For records, before the Indian Film Industry had started to flourish in Bombay (Mumbai), the main seat of film production in India was Calcutta (Kolkata). Among the stalwarts of film-making of those early years were A R Kardar. He had recently moved to Bombay from Calcutta and was making a movie called Baghban. Well-known composer Mustaq Hossain was the music director and Naushad was appointed as his assistant music director. There were a few films that were made in this production and he got to learn the nuances of film music. 

In the meantime, another important development took place. Naushad came in contact with the great music composer Khemchand Prakash. This was a turning point. Khemchand Prakash was not just a great musician but also a wonderful teacher. Other than Naushad, he had groomed none other than Kishore Kumar, the legendary playback singer. It was unfortunate that Khemchand Prakash had passed away before the release of his most popular film "Mahal" - but that is another story.

Naushad had all his life considered A R Kardar and Khemchand Prakash as his mentor and guru. There was one more person who helped Naushad a lot. It was D.N.Madhok. He could spot the immense talent of Naushad and encouraged him to become a full-time music composer. Naushad got his first big break as an independent composer and the name of the film was Prem Nagar (1940). D N Madhok was the writer of the film. Prem Nagar was a story set in Kutch, western India. Naushad researched and spent days to understand the folk songs of that part of India. We shall talk about songs of this film later on in the series. 

Several films followed and his association with both A R Kardar and D N Madhok continued. The first super success that came to Naushad was with the film Rattan (1944). This film, too, was set in rural India and this time Naushad brought tunes from his home state Uttar Pradesh into Hindi films - for the first time........ In his own words, "there were tunes from Bengal and Punjab, but not from UP, I brought them!". Songs became raging hit, surpassing all expectations. Every lane, by-lane, small town, village, big town, city of India was swept away by the songs of Rattan. A traditional Indian instrument Dholak was used for the first time in films. 

[To be continued]