Shankar Jaikishan - Barsaat: The First Break

Barsaat: The First Break

Raj Kapoor made his debut as a director with the film Aag in 1948. While the film received a mixed response at the box office, its musical score (in which the music director Ram Ganguli was assisted by Shankar and Jaikishan) proved to be quite popular. However, during the recording of some song for his new venture Barsaat, Raj Kapoor had some serious differences with Ram Ganguly, the music composer of the film and decided to assign its music to Shankar who insisted on taking Jaikishan as his partner and thus came into existence the new pair of music directors(MD) named 'Shankar-Jaikishan' who gave landmark, path-breaking and trend-setting music for the RK production Barsaat in 1949.

Himself being a trained singer (he and Mukesh learned vocal music from the same Guru) and having an ear for good music, Raj Kapoor thus, took on board, a completely new team of composers Shankar and Jaikishan and lyricists Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri (a former bus conductor). On the insistence of Shankar, he and SJ co-opted the upcoming singing talent Lata Mangeshkar, and repeated Mukesh as Raj Kapoor's ghost voice for the various songs of Barsaat. In due course, this team was to prove to be one of the most successful musical combinations.

Barsaat was a super hit, both commercially and more so musically. Among other things, it established Lata Mangeshkar as the undisputed queen of Hindi film music. It also had the distinction of giving two firsts to Hindi cinema – a title song ("Barsaat Mein Humse Mile") and a cabaret ("Patli Kamar Hai"). The film propelled Shankar-Jaikishan on the road to musical super-stardom and to a stature that remains unmatched to this date.