1967, the year that gave us the definitive Hindi birthday song 'Baar baar din yeh aaye'

The ‘performance within a performance’ song has always been a good excuse for actors to break into song and dance in Hindi cinema. It’s the kind of song when an occasion—such as an anniversary or a party—is being celebrated and there is a two-tier audience watching the performance—the audience within the film and the viewers watching the film itself.

Birthday songs fall in this category and 1967 was the year when two of the most memorable birthday songs featured in Hindi cinema. In Ram Aur Shyam (1967), we had the song ‘Aayee hain bahaarey, mitey zulm-o-sitam’, whose lyrics mentioned both the title characters ‘Ram’ and ‘Shyam’. But the more definitive birthday song in that year was from Ravikant Nagaich’s Farz (1967). The film had the number, ‘Baar baar din yeh aaye, baar baar dil yeh gaaye’, sung by Mohammed Rafi, which has gone on to become the unofficial Hindi film birthday song. As Javed Akhtar noted in the recent episode of The Golden Years: 1950-1975, A Musical Journey, which featured Hindi film songs from 1967, “We can never forget this song… This song has become eternal because no matter whose birthday is celebrated, after we sing ‘happy birthday’, it is this song that is played.”    

Farz, which had the actor Jeetendra playing the lead role, saw him finally make it big. Jeetendra had earlier acted in Hindi films doing bit roles. He was first noticed in V Shantaram’s Geet Gaaya Pattharon Ne (1964). But Farz took his popularity into an altogether different league. Acting in this spy thriller and featuring in a bunch of popular songs such as ‘Mast bahaaron ka main aashiq’ and ‘Hum toh tere aashiq hain sadiyon puraane’ in his inimitable dancing style earned Jeetendra the nickname, ‘Jumping Jack’. He would go on to build on Farz’s success and carve his own niche in Hindi films right through the 1970s all the way upto the mid-1980s.

Another actor and a very good friend of Jeetendra’s, who was slowly making a name for himself around the same time, was Rajesh Khanna. Although Chetan Anand’s Aakhri Khat (1966) was his first released film, Raaz (1967) was the first film that Khanna had signed after winning the United Producers’ talent contest. The film, which paired Khanna with Babita, had the beautiful haunting song, ‘Akele hain chale aao, jahaan ho’.

In the same year, Khanna also starred opposite Asha Parekh in filmmaker Nasir Husain’s Baharon Ke Sapne. The film was based on a story written by Husain in his college days and was dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. It was very different from Husain’s usual frothy brand of cinema which almost always had the lost-and-found element in it. Instead, Baharon Ke Sapne dealt with a grim topic regarding the struggles of mill-workers against greedy, aristocratic capitalists. The film had some really fine songs penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri and composed by RD Burman such as ‘Aaja piya tohey pyaar doon’, ‘Chunari sambhaal gori’ and ‘Kya jaanu sajan hoti hai kya gham ki shaam’.

Khanna’s big hit would come a few years later in Aradhana (1969). The film was directed by Shakti Samanta with whom Khanna would forge a prolific collaboration, starring in films like Kati Patang (1970), Amar Prem (1972) and Mehbooba (1976). But before Khanna, Samanta’s favourite actor was Shammi Kapoor. The filmmaker did six films in all with Kapoor ever since he first worked with the actor in Singapore (1960). Samanta’s films with Kapoor, celebrated exotic locales as was evident in the film’s titles— Singapore, Kashmir Ki Kali (1964) and An Evening In Paris (1967). The last one had the lilting duet, ‘Raat ke humsafar’ picturized on Kapoor and Sharmila Tagore, besides other fine songs such as ‘Deewane ka naam toh poochho’ and ‘Aasmaan se aaya farishtaa’.

Samanta was among a bunch of filmmakers who celebrated these foreign locales as was evident in An Evening In Paris’s title track. In the same year as Samanta’s film, there was another film, Around The World (1967), which had Raj Kapoor and Rajshree as its lead pair and celebrated various foreign destinations. The film’s title track, ‘Around the world in eight dollars’, articulated this idea very clearly, but as Javed Akhtar observed, “You see, songs also help tell you about a certain bygone era… Why was it eight dollars (in the song) and not nine or ten dollars? The reason for it was at that time foreign exchange was used quite judiciously because of it shortage. So if someone was travelling outside the country as a tourist, the government would give him only eight dollars and no more than that.” 

You can watch the next episode of The Golden Years: 1950-1975, A Musical Journey with Javed Akhtar on Zee Classic, this coming Sunday at 8 pm.