Kora Kagaz Tha - Aradhana (1969)

Kora Kagaz Tha - Aradhana (1969)

Posted by Nerdyy

Ah Welcome November - my favorite month of the year where the air is cool and crisp, the leaves are orangish red, and a lot of the more important people in this world were born :P

In keeping with the favorite theme - November will blend two of my favorites - my favorite singer and my favorite radio program that I grew up listening to religiously. The favorite singer of course is Kishore Kumar so we will get to listen to 30 Kishore Kumar songs over the course of this month - both solos and duets. However there is a caveat and that concerns the connection with my favorite radio program which used to be called Binaca Geetmala. This beloved program used to be aired from Radio Ceylon (later Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation), and was India's first and longest running weekly countdown show. It ran every week from 1954 till mid 1994 after which it was discontinued due to its inability to compete with a burgeoning TV industry. It was broadcast every Wednesday night from 8 pm till 9pm and I used to listen to it every Wednesday between mid 1980 until I left for the US in mid 1992. I was an occasional listener between mid 1978 until mid 1980. There were plenty of people that used to list every single weekly countdown songs in their order of popularity - Yes I did it for a while to (from abt 1983 end till 1989 end). The broadcaster of this beloved program was Ameen Sayani with his magical voice and his entertaining style of presentation.

The idea of the program was very simple - every week Mr Sayani would broadcast the top 16 songs of the week (based on sales and ratings of listeners). He would assign points to the songs with 1 point to song number 16, 2 points to song number 15, ... and 16 points to song number 1. At the end of the year he would add up all the points and during the last two weeks of the year he would broadcast the top 30-35 songs, with glimpses (what he would call jhalaks) of some of the songs that just missed the cut.

There were some interesting modifications to the rules of the program over the years. Prior to 1965, songs would be broadcast on weekly shows as long as they were popular, so a song could conceivably play for the entire year. However in 1964 music director Shankar (of Shankar Jaikishan) got incensed that the song composed by him Dost Dost Na Raha was always getting lower popularity ratings than a Jaikishan composed song Yeh Mera Prem Patra Padhkar (both from Sangam) and accused the program of favoritism - the long and short of this hissy fit was that at the end of the year an extra group of people over and above the total points accumulated would decide the raning of the songs - thus this obviously meant manipulated lists. This continued till 1977 after which it was abolished. Additionally only a maximum of two songs per movie would be allowed to be played in a weeks' program regardless of whether there were more songs from the same movie that were popular or not. And songs could play for a maximum of 18 weeks after which they were retired (Sartaj Geet).

Starting in 1978, songs were retired after 25 weeks rather than 18, if a song played more than 18 weeks, they would be played as a short glimpse or jhalak. Every week there would be 16 songs on the program that had played 18 or less weeks in the weekly programs, and an additional number of songs that had played more than 18 weeks but less than 25 i.e. there could be weeks where the program would play the top 23 songs and another week where only 19 songs were played. Also starting in 1978, the year end annual popularity charts would be ranked solely on the basis of points collected in the weekly popularity charts. The math nerd in me of course immediately found out the serious flaw in this rule - the points a song collected in a week depended on the number of songs played that week - i.e. in a week that 23 songs are played the top song would get 23 points but in a week that 19 songs played the top song would get 19 points - thus the year end total points would be affected by the number of songs playing in the different weeks. The program also figured this out so starting in 1980 this rule was done away with - there would be only 16 songs played each week and the annual program would be a straightforward addition of total points. Once again for a math nerd, it shoudnt be difficult to figure out that songs that started playing in 1977 and continued playing in 1978 would be at a serious disadvantage with respect to the total points accumulated, while songs that started playing in 1979 and continued to 1980 would be at a serious advantage.

Just as an FYI a long time e friend of mine has a collection of every weekly program list from 1971 till 1980 - using his lists we have recaculated the top 50 songs for the years 1973 till 1979, we have been working on 1980 for the last year and half without a lot of progress (obviously work creates a significant lack of time :D) - by the way it took us about 10 years to do all the recalculations till now LOLLLL, and there were plenty of differences with the official lists. So I can defintely tell you the popularity of a song during this period, pre 1965 period as well as 1981 onwards with some idea about 1980. However for the period of 1965-1972, as well as 1980 it wont be the exact accurate popularity but I have a pretty good idea :D

Wow - that is a pretty detailed explanation.

Back to songs - here is a great song from Aradhana to kick off the month. This song was actually composed by R.D. Burman who took over composing the music for Aradhana when his dad fell ill.  R.D also convinced Kishore Kumar to sing for Rajesh Khanna which would explain the Aradhana album having two Rafi and three Kishore Kumar songs. Of the three Kishore Kumar songs, this was the only one that was completely somposed by R. D., the other two were mostly composed by his dad with some final tuning done by R.D. This song was #32 in 1969 and #15 in 1970.