New Delhi, India – For three generations of Indians, Bollywood and radio meant one name: Ameen Sayani. On Tuesday, the voices that reached the homes of hundreds of millions of people were silenced one last time.
Sayani, who began his career in the early 1950s with a weekly countdown of Bollywood songs and dominated Indian airwaves for more than 60 years, died of cardiac arrest in Mumbai. He was 91 years old.
To viewers, he was more than just a presenter. Blessed with a warm and gentle voice, he cultivated a fun and unique broadcasting style that conjured the image of a sincere friend speaking directly to each listener over the radio. He is a friend who knows no difference between generations and has built a cult following and fostered love among Bollywood songs and listeners.
His original radio show 'Binaca Geetmala' ran for 42 years and made several lyricists, composers and singers famous and even saved many films from oblivion.
“In those days, radio was king and he was the king of kings,” Anurag Chaturvedi, a journalist and author who knew Sayani well, told Al Jazeera.
Throughout his career, which spanned much of India's independence journey, Sayani recorded at least 50,000 radio programs, provided his voice for 19,000 jingles, hosted television shows, and narrated and cameoed in Bollywood films, often appearing in I was a radio presenter.
“If you look at the history of our radio from 1927, when radio was incorporated in India, to today, there is only one voice, one name that remains in our memory: Ameen Sayani. He was a superstar and his voice was like a gift from heaven,” musicologist Pavan Jha told Al Jazeera.
India's national radio broadcaster, All India Radio (AIR), is also known as Akashvani, which means heavenly announcement or voice from the sky in Hindi.
Notes on women first and rebellion in Hindi and Urdu
Ameen Sayani's radio career began with Prohibition.
In the winter of 1952, India's Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Balakrishna Vishwanath Keskar, ordered the film music to be broadcast nationally, calling its lyrics irrational, vulgar, Westernized, and a threat to Indian classical music. was expelled from.
In AIR, Hindustani and Carnatic music replaced film music as announcements and news bulletins became increasingly Sanskritized.
Radio Ceylon, a radio station established in Colombo, Sri Lanka during World War II, saw an opportunity to bring music and news to British soldiers stationed in South Asia.
It brought together sponsor Binaca Top, a toothpaste brand, and Sayani's brother Hamid, a studio owner and producer based in what was then called Bombay and now Mumbai.
On December 3, 1952, a few months after Keshal's ban, Radio Ceylon's powerful military transmitter delivered the first Vinaka Geetmala (Wreath of Songs) to homes across India, with a cheerful and cheeky greeting from 20-year-old Ameen Sayani. I sent it in. “Behno aur bhaiyon, aap ki khidmat me Ameen Sayani ka adaab (Sisters and brothers, Ameen Sayani greets you with respect).”
The show's signature song was from the silly but catchy Hindi movie song “Pon Pon, Ding Ding Beats the Drum,” and Sayani's greeting was in Hindustani. Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu, was the language of Bollywood movies and songs, and it was also the language of the people.
Sayani's fresh, fun style, lilting voice of defiance, and choice to reverse the order of the traditional greeting “brothers and sisters” made the show an instant hit.
“There was gender sensitivity and Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb in that greeting,” Chaturvedi said, referring to India's traditionally mixed Hindu-Muslim culture.
He was a cultural ambassador and spokesperson for Hindi-Bollywood music.
Born in 1932 into an elite family in Mumbai, Sayani's mother, Kulsum Patel, was a Hindu, and her father, Dr. Jaan Mohammad Sayani, was a Muslim. Both were part of the Indian freedom movement.
Sayani says she became fluent in Hindustani after years of helping her mother edit and print the fortnightly magazine Rabel (which means guide in Urdu). The body, he said. In his interview, he recalled a note that Mahatma Gandhi once wrote to his mother: May you be successful. ”
Sayani and his brother recorded Vinaka Geetmala's show in a Bombay studio and sent the magnetic tapes by plane to Radio Ceylon, which was outside the jurisdiction of the Indian government.
The show's format was simple: Based on listener requests and record sales, Sayani performed 16 Hindi film songs in order of popularity. Sayani has been compared to the iconic American presenter Casey Kasem, who dominated music radio in his native country with his American Top 40 show. However, in a later interview Sayani mentioned his admiration for Kasem, whose show preceded Kasem's by nearly 20 years and set a template that the world would follow.
While the Indian government kept movie songs off the airwaves, Sayani celebrated Bollywood songs and elevated them into a popular art form. He introduced each song by name, including the writer, composer and singer, and told anecdotes about the song, their struggles and dedication.
According to Jha, in the late 1980s, when Congress leader Amitabh Bachchan was facing allegations of involvement in a corruption defense pact, the release of his film Shehenshah kept getting delayed. “Vinaka Geetmala kept the film alive by playing the song Andheri Raton Mein ('Dark Night') on repeat for months on end,” he said.
Sayani was also a polite marketer. He regularly said “give me a binaka top smile” to promote his sponsored toothpaste and connect with his listeners.
“That sound in his voice, you instantly connect. [he had] With his listeners…he was more than a radio host. He was a cultural ambassador and an advertiser and spokesperson for Hindi-Bollywood music,” Jha said. Like thousands of others, he sat in front of the radio every Wednesday at 8pm, notebook in hand, writing down information about songs and their rankings.
“Everyone in the house was listening to his program: the woman cooking in the kitchen, the man in the living room, the bauji (grandfather) on the balcony,” Jha said.
A letter from Jhumri Teraiya to the voice in his heart
Ameen Sayani's career was synonymous with the golden age of Indian radio, and he also hosted other popular shows such as the weekly Bournvita Quiz Contest, which he took over after his brother's death.
He created hundreds of 15-minute promotional films for radio and sold toothpaste and headache medicine on radio and television. But apart from Bollywood, it was in a dusty, nondescript town called Jhumri Teraiya that he really spread across India.
On Binaca Geetmala, Sayani asked listeners to email them their favorite songs and rankings, and read some of their notes during the broadcast. This created dedicated radio clubs and passionate letter writers across the country, including in the mica-mining town of Jhumri Teraiya in the northern Indian state of Jharkhand.
Mine magnate Rameshwar Prasad Barnwal was reportedly the first Jhumri Teraiya resident to start sending postcards to farmers (song requests). Perhaps intrigued, Sayani regularly read out his requests and town names in sing-song style on his show.
Many listeners thought Sayani had made up this funny-sounding city as a joke, but on Jhumri Teraiya, letter writing became fashionable and an ego trip. Residents began sending several letters each week, reportedly even bribing postmen not to post other people's letters to increase the chances that Sayani would receive them. It is said that
At the peak of Vinaka Geetmala, which eventually moved from Radio Ceylon to the All India Radio Network and ran until 1994, around 400 radio clubs and thousands of individuals made requests to Sayani every day. I was writing.
“He knew the art of radio announcements. He used flowery language and played with voices and words. But he had a sense of style…he had a lot of adab (sophistication). There was,” Chaturvedi said.
“Ameen Sayani was special. His voice stood out because it came from the heart.”