Sur Sangam Puraskar


One of my favourite pastimes in life is to imagine a past where I was the Sole Judge of Musical Awards during the Golden Age of Hindi Film Music - the 1950s. And I decided ,one fine day that rather than repeatedly using the pen and paper for listing it out, to put it out on my web page. And it did not take me too long to make out the list et al. But certainly finding the time to create the page itself proved to be the toughest task. But thankfully, I managed to squeeze out some time and here is my Authoritive on Who Are the Bests.

The awards - which I have titled the Sur Sangam Awards - are for the period 1951 to 1959, certainly the finest years of Hindi - and Indian - cine music. While I would love to ventrue into the latter half of the 1940s too, lack of info prevents me from doing so - and lack of interest prevents me from expanding post-1959. Actually, the music IMO turned downhill right in the later half of the 1950s and this would be obvious by the dwindling number of films that get mentioned. It reached a stage where I had to literally push films into the nominations section in 1958-59, in contrast to the 1951-1955 phase where it was enormously difficult to decide on which movie to leave out.

The chronology is completely from Hamraaz's Filmi Geet Kosh (Vol 3). No praise can be too high for this monumental work which he has put together. I, as a simple sangeet premi, convey my heart-felt gratitude to him for the ready info accessible to us.
Yes, the Awards are as per the listing in the Geet Kosh. Films released in 1951 are candidates for the Sur Sangam Awards of 1951 and so on. The Sur Sangam Awards comprise of the following categories :

           


Sur Samrat Puraskar - Award for the Best Music Director for the year

Kundan Lal Saigal Puraskar - Award for the Best Singer for the year. There would be different awards for the Male and Female singers though the Award name remains the same.

Mian Tansen Puraskar - The Musical Personality of the Year (anyone - a composer, singer or lyricist)


There shall be FIVE final nominations for the Sur Samrat Puraskar for the Best Music Director, and THREE for the Kundan Lal Saigal Puraskar for singers.

Seeing the phenomenol musicals which raged the times, there are three sections indicating the important musicals of the year.
The Also-Rans - Important musicals which were in the fray but could not make it to the filter stage.
The Almosts - Classics which almost made it to the final list of nominations. They could not make it either because the final nominees were simply better or ,unfortunately, all the songs from the film have not been heard.

I apologize for not having a seperate category for lyricists. But I do not consider myself capable of judging poetry.

So friends. Now that you have the picture, march on to the Sur Sangam Awards - and lets see if we agree or we agree to disagree !!!

           

Click on the year to go to the Sur Sangam Awards for that year.






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