Song Review

Let’s start the day with paying homage to the *”Ustad”* who bought Indian classical music to the global audience, *”Zakir Hussain Allarakha Qureshi (9 March 1951 – 15 December 2024)”* 

Hussain was awarded the titles of Padma Shri in 1988, Padma Bhushan in 2002,  and Padma Vibhushan in 2023.

Presented with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1990 by the President of India, making him one of the youngest musicians to receive this recognition given by the Sangeet Natak Academy, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama.

On 8 February 2009 for the 51st Grammy Awards, Hussain won the Grammy in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project along with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju & Giovanni Hidalgo.

In 2024 he made history at the 66th Grammy Awards by becoming the first Indian musician to win three Grammy Awards in a single night.

He was as great a man as he was a tabla player, composer, percussionist, music producer, and film actor.

Today’s song is from Amit Khanna’s 1998 romantic drama film *”Saaz”* directed by Sai Paranjpye. 

The film starred Shabana Azmi, Aruna Irani and Zakir Hussain. They were supported by Raghubir Yadav, Aditi Deshpande, Parikshit Sahni and Ayesha Dharkar. 

The plot is allegedly based on the life of legendary singing sisters of Bollywood, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle.

In an interview after the release of the film Asha said, "Its not true at all. To have two women in long plaits, take a couple of incidents and exaggerate them into a 3-hour film is such a waste of time."

Sai Paranjpe wanted two top heroines to play the two roles. Shabana chose the more challenging role of the younger sister. Rekha and Moushumi refused to play elder sister to Shabana. Sai would have approached Hema malini but Shabana was unwilling to act with Hema at that time - they had both vied for the role of the queen of Jhansi in an international film and neither had succeeded. This had soured relations between them. Sai settled for Aruna Irani, who was a top character artiste at that time.

Today’s song in discussion is from  “Saaz”. The movie was a Sai Paranjpe directed movie with Amit Khanna’s Plus Films producing it. It has Kavita Krishnamurthy giving her playback and the lyricist is Javed Aktar. But the icing on the cake is the music director himself who also played a small role in the film, Zakir Hussain.

When Kavita Krishnamurthy sang in the film, every one though Shabana Azmi was singing in her own voice. She had to convince people it was not her.

*"Kya Tumne Hai Keh Diya"* lyrics by Javed Akhtar, composed by Zakir Hussain and Sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy 🎤🎵🎶🎧