Skip to main content

Signature Tune of Doordarshan and the Montage

Doordarshan montage, collageIn 1973, the signature tune of Doordarshan was first brought to life by Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan during his shehnai recital in an hour and a half long inauguration ceremony of Doordarshan Television Channel held at Vigyan Bhava in new Delhi. Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan was the one who first breathed life into that sad sounding tune.


As more and more cities started receiving the signals of Doordarshan, the number of its viewers kept increasing. It became a truly powerful medium. But, a medium of what - this was yet to be decided. Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister at the time, understood the power of this new medium. A common sentiment of the public during the turbulent 70s was: Nehru was a visionary, Shastri a revisionary, and Indira Gandhi a televisionary. Indira Gandhi knew how to wield and harvest the power of television. Indira Gandhi wanted the signature tune of Doordarshan to be based on the national song of India - Iqbal's saarey jahan se acha.
The task of composing the tune was entrusted to sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar. But, he realized that the actual tune of saarey jahan se acha was of a bit longer duration. Working with Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan, Ravi Shankar finally came up with a variation of the original tune and created what can truly be termed the 'National tune of India'. A slow mournful sounding tune that became a cherished memory for generations of Indians. A memory twisted in swirls...the swirl.

-0-

Doordarshan Montage (originally designed at NID) 

-0-
You may also like to read my earlier post about signature tune of AIR
and
the freedom run torch song of Doordarshan
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousNov 2, 2008, 1:19:00 AM

    heyy..i sooo want that freedom run video (aka the Torch of freedom video)..please ddo find it for me ..or let me know what i can do to get it..
    thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Vinayak RazdanNov 4, 2008, 9:53:00 PM

    Anony,
    This is your luck day. I finally found the video.
    Look for it at my updated post here:
    Torch of Freedom

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFeb 20, 2009, 6:26:00 PM

    Great job man
    Keep It Up..
    I had been looking for it for many days..
    It reminds me of my childhood...
    Thanks bro...

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFeb 27, 2009, 3:30:00 PM

    Prabhdeep,
    thanks for the nice comments!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Vinayak RazdanJul 30, 2009, 12:44:00 PM

    Internet is a funny place. I saw the introductory text of this post about the story of signature tune of Doordarshan copy-pasted on a couple of blogs. I am flattered.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousSep 1, 2009, 10:11:00 AM

    Thank you very mych, It brings memmories of my childhod and our old TV set.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sandeep DNov 26, 2009, 11:25:00 PM

    Thanks for the memories

    ReplyDelete
  8. shaggyOct 23, 2010, 7:49:00 PM

    great blog brother! arrived looking for target magazine and couldn't help commenting on the doordarshan intro post..i'm also a great admirer of the simplicity, honesty and earthy creativity of our "good old" but in this case was heartbroken to watch Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 movie "vertigo"..the opening credits have the same hypnotic beats and swirls forming into the doordarshan emblem - the circle with 2 rounded leaves. the shehnai part seems to be our only fig leaf of originality.
    I could never understand why they had to make this blatant lift. Any ideas?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Vinayak RazdanOct 24, 2010, 12:33:00 AM

    I claim to be a Hitchcock fan mostly because I got to see his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents on a Pakistani station while growing up. But this I didn't see coming. I guess someone at NID must have got "inspired". This is actually sad. But yeah India hai, what to expect. Or maybe that swirl is just the manifestation of a mathematical function, a generic Logarithmic spiral, that both Saul Bass and the guys at NID found interesting.

    Okay, they just lifted the idea. Damn, one more pure goodness desecrated!

    ReplyDelete
  10. duryodhan biswalMay 26, 2011, 2:32:00 PM

    wow bro...good job...i had download AIR N DD1 -S signture tune..

    ReplyDelete
  11. UnknownJun 5, 2013, 8:53:00 PM

    "Who composed the dhoordarsan music?" This question was asked in NEENGALUM VELLALAAM ORU KOODI (in vijay tv) but the partisipant cant answer the question. The question was "Who composed the dhoordarsan music?"-- Ans: Pandit Ravi Shankar.......But he tried his level best.......hats offf.......This question is the 1 crore th question

    ReplyDelete
  12. UnknownJun 5, 2013, 8:58:00 PM

    woowww i like that question...

    ReplyDelete
  13. BlazgfireDec 9, 2016, 5:02:00 PM

    I like this tune wow....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I always like to hear back :)
However, irrelevant comments and irrelevant links will not be published. Needless to say, same goes for abusive comment and spam. Leaving back links related to the topic is encouraged. I know it can be tempting but try not to leave your email ids, phone nos and CVs in the comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Famous Old Faces of Doordarshan

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.
176 comments
Read more

Indian Cigarette Vintage Ads

He put a cigarette in his mouth and, as a matter of silent routine, offered one to Gwyn, who said ‘No thanks.”Richard looked at him.”I packed it in.”"You what?”"I stopped. Three days ago. Cold. That’s it. You just make the life choice.” Richard looked up and inhaled needfully. He gazed at his cigarette. He didn’t really want to smoke it. He wanted to eat it. Almost the only thing that he still liked about Gwyn was that he still smoked…Paradoxically, he no longer wanted to give up smoking: what he wanted to do was take up smoking. Not so much to fill the little gaps between cigarettes with cigarettes (there wouldn’t be time, anyway) or to smoke two cigarettes at once. It was more that he felt the desire to smoke a cigarette even when he was smoking a cigarette. The need was and wasn’t being met… While it would always be true and fair to say that Richard felt like a cigarette, it would now be doubly true and fair to say it. He felt like a cigarette. And he felt like a cig
21 comments
Read more

Kishore Kumar, Yodel-ay-ee-oooo Songs, A List

*Updated with corrections pointed out by Bart Plantenga , author of some incredible book on Yodeling including Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. -0- Kishore Kumar 's brother Anoop Kumar, who we basically know for the line ' O manu tera toh hua ab mera kya hoga ', used to own lots of Austrian music records. And from these records, Kishore Kumar picked up the art of Yodel singing, an art perfected in bathroom and then introduced by him to the world of Hindi film music. According to his biography 'Kishore Kumar: method in madness‎ ' by Derek Bose, "Kishore was a fan of the Swiss singer Tex Norton [* Tex Morton, an Australian cowboy born in New Zealand who sang  in the gene autry / Jimmie Rodgers style ] and the Australian Jimmy Rogers [* Jimmie Rodgers , perhaps the most American and one of the most famous yodelers in the world, famous for his blue yodels ] as well." Although most of these songs by Kishore Kumar are t
18 comments
Read more