Anthony Gonsalves was one of the industry’s first music arrangers. He found work with Shyam Sundar as a violinist in 1943 at the age of 16. He soon graduated to ‘arranging’ music for him, fully orchestrating several of his songs. He also worked with Ghulam Haidar, Anil Biswas, Naushad, O. P. Nayyar and Madan Mohan and was indispensable to some of them. With the introduction of magnetic recording in the 50s, composers became more experimental. C. Ramachandra introduced ‘swing’ into Bollywood with tunes such as Gore Gore O Banke Chore (Samadhi) and Shola Jo Bhadke (Albela). ongs such as these would not have been possible without C. Ramachandra’s collaboration with Chic Chocolate, a Goan trumpettist who led a Jazz band at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay and was Bombay’s bestknown jazz musician. He has almost been deleted from history. His family was in possession of some photos and few gramophone discs which is all that remains of his music.

http://www.womenonrecord.com/music-makers/media-makers/music-arrangers

Shahid Amin

Professor of History at Delhi University. He is the author of Event, Metaphor, Memory : Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992 (1995), and Writing Alternative Histories : A View from India (2002).

The Linguistic Survey of India was conducted by the British authorities from 1914 to 1929 to record Indian dialects and languages – ostensibly for the training of British civil servants in India. The recordings were untraceable for a long time and were recovered recently and quite unexpectedly from the basement of the British Library in London. The survey contains recordings of stories, poems, songs and other parts of our oral heritage which have been lost. This is what makes the recordings so valuable. Shahid Amin introduces these recordings and tells the incredible story of how they were conducted. He is in the process of digitizing them in collaboration with the University of Chicago. They will soon be available on this website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11677932

© Shahid Amin