Ye Ranj Judaai Ke Uthaaye Nahin Jaate

This article is written by Sadanand Kamath, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Forgotten Melodies of the 1940s – 46
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I take it as a privilege to present the 100th song of a low profile music director who was very active during 1937-1948 though his musical career in films extended till 1965. I have described him as a low profile music director because he and his music has rarely been discussed in articles and books pertaining to Hindi film music. Even Dr Ashok Da Ranade, in his book ‘Hindi Film Song – Music Beyond Boundary’ has not found it necessary to discuss the technicalities of his musical scores who was music director for 58 films aggregating over 600 songs. The music director under discussion is Gyan Dutt.

Browsing through the statistics page on the Blog, I realised that only 86 songs composed by Gyan Dutt were covered in the Blog in a span of over 7 years. With over 600 songs to his credit, I felt that we have been slow in posting his songs. A century of songs in the Blog for an artist is a ‘de facto’ recognition of the contribution of an artist in the sphere of Hindi film music in our own way and I felt that Gyan Dutt deserved this recognition.

However, what prompted to hasten the posting of songs composed by Gyan Dutt on the Blog was the fact that two of his colleagues in Ranjit Moveitone, namely Bulo C Rani (with 580 songs) and Khemchand Prakash ( with 430 songs) got their century songs posted in the Blog as early as 13/11/2011 and 04/09/2013 respectively. There are valid reasons why Gyan Dutt’s century song took so long. While selecting his songs for posting, I realised that even though Gyan Dutt composed over 600 songs, a majority of his songs are not available on YT. As the situation stands today, my guess is that it would be a herculean task to locate sufficient number of songs composed by Gyan Dutt to reach even 200 songs in the Blog.

I have not been able to get any information on the early life of Gyan Dutt. I was interested in knowing how he got attracted to the film music. What I get to know from a few sources on the internet is that he was staying in Bangalore before he shifted to Bombay (Mumbai) sometime in mid-1930s. A couple of sources also mention that he was assisting music director Timir Baran before coming to Mumbai.

After the talkies came in 1931, prominent film producing entities like Imperial, Ranjit, Minerva, Sagar etc began to look for music directors. Ranjit Moveitone had Jhande Khan, Banne Khan, Rewa Shankar etc as the music directors on their rolls. With the introduction of playback singing system around 1935, the role of music directors became very important. During this period, Ranjit Movietone took Gyan Dutt on its roll and his first film as a music director was ‘Toofaani Toli’ (1937).

In 1938, Gyan Dutt composed songs for as many as 8 films under the banner of Ranjit Movietone. With Khemchand Prakash joining Ranjit Movietone in 1940, the pressure of work on Gyan Dutt seems to have got reduced and he was selectively permitted to score music for films outside of Ranjit banner. In 1942, Bulo C Rani joined Ranjit Movietone and started assisting both Gyan Dutt and Khemchand Prakash. It was only after Gyan Dutt and Khemchand Prakash left Ranjit Studios some time in 1943 and 1945 respectively that Bulo C Rani started getting his independent assignments as music Director with ‘Caravan’ (1944) under Ranjit banner.

From 1944 onwards, Gyan Dutt worked as a free-lance music director working for many prestigious banners. I have given below a table listing his films with number of songs in the bracket. It can be seen that Gyan Dutt composed music for 27 films under Ranjit Movietone and 31 films as a free-lance music director making a total of 58 films aggregating 601 songs.

Filmography of Gyan Dutt 

[Inforamtion culled from myswar.com. I have also crossed checked with other sources like muvyz.com, filmssong.in etc. and also for some specific films not covered in the first link].

I have been listening to quite a number of songs composed by Gyan Dutt for last two months. Most of his songs have Hindustani classical raag basis with minimum orchestration. Those days, lyrics played an important role as songs were fitted in the films as a continuation of the story. So it was to be ensured that orchestration will not overshadow the lyrics. Listening to his song compositions in almost all films of the 30s and also films like ‘Bhakta Surdas’ (1942), ‘Shankar Parvati’ (1943) ‘Geet Govind’ (1947), ‘Samrat Ashok’ (1947) gave me this kind of impression.

I notice a change in his style of compositions from 1948 onwards in films like ‘Laal Dupatta’ (1948) and ‘Sunehre Din’ (1949) probably realising that there were winds of change in music direction. However, thereafter, he seems to have persisted with his revised style of song compositions making him almost redundant in the backdrop of the emergence of new music directors in the late 40s and early 50s. After 1956, his next film was ‘Janam Janam Ke Saathi’ (1965) which turned out to be his last film. Gyan Dutt breathe his last on 03/12/1974 in Mumbai.

Somehow, I get a strong feeling that despite his good music, luck was not in his favour. Some of his films which had very good songs, did not fare well at the box office and those good songs were dumped by the audience along with the films – something which happened later to Madan Mohan in the 50s and 60s. Gyan Dutt had a good box office hit in ‘Bhakta Surdas’ (1942) with his songs which became very popular and are still popular. But that did not give him a good push to his career as much as Khemchand Prakash got from the success of ‘Tansen’ (1943). Despite good songs and a good box office success of his film ‘Sunehre Din’ (1949), Gyan Dutt’s musical career plunged to such an extent that he found it difficult to come out of it.

Today, I am presenting the 100th songs composed by Gyan Dutt to appear on the Blog. The song is ‘Ye Ranj Judaai Ke Uthhaaye Nahin Jaate’ from GHAZAL (1945). The 8 songs in the film were penned by four songwriters – D N Madhok, Shant Arora, Khawar Zaman and Abid Gulrez. However, the distribution of songs among them is not available. Similarly, the names of the singers are not identified in myswar.com. As far as this ghazal is concerned, I feel that the voice may be that of Naseem Akhtar after I had done the voice comparison with another song of her from the film. Sudhir ji has also confirmed that the singer is Naseem Akhtar.

This ghazal is a fitting tribute to Gyan Dutt on his 100th song in the Blog.

Song – Ye Ranj Judaai Ke Uthaaye Nahin Jaate (Ghazal) (1945) Singer – Naseem Akhtar, Lyrics – [Unattributed], MD – Gyan Dutt

Lyrics

ye ranj judaai ke uthhaaye nahin jaate ae
ye ranj judaai ke uthhaaye nahin jaate ae
majboor hain lab pe bhi to laaye nahin jaate ae
majboor hain lab pe bhi to laaye nahin jaate ae
ye ranj judaai ke

waade jo mohabbat ke nighaaon ne kiye thhe ae ae
waade jo mohabbat ke nighaaon ne kiye thhe
wo bhool gaye hum se bhulaaye nahin jaate
wo bhool gaye hum se bhulaaye nahin jaate
ye ranj judaai ke

wo unki jafaayen ho yaa khud apni wafaayen
wo unki jafaayen ho yaa khud apni wafaayen
ye raaz hain gairon ko sunaayen nahin jaate ae
ye raaz hain gairon ko sunaayen nahin jaate ae
ye ranj judaai ke

kab tak dil-e-beemaar ko doon jhoothi tassali ee
kab tak dil-e-beemaar ko doon jhoothi tassali ee
jhoothi tassaali
ab jaan se chhooten bhi to haaye nahin jaate
ab jaan se chhooten bhi to haaye nahin jaate
ye ranj judaai ke

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Hindi script lyrics (Provided by Sudhir)
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ये रंज जुदाई के उठाए नहीं जाते
ये रंज जुदाई के उठाए नहीं जाते
मजबूर हैं लब पे भी तो लाये नहीं जाते
मजबूर हैं लब पे भी तो लाये नहीं जाते
ये रंज जुदाई के

वादे जो मोहब्बत के निगाहों ने किए थे॰॰ ए॰॰ ए
वादे जो मोहब्बत के निगाहों ने किए थे
वो भूल गए हमसे भुलाए नहीं जाते
वो भूल गए हमसे भुलाए नहीं जाते
ये रंज जुदाई के

वो उनकी जफाएँ हो या खुद अपनी वफाएँ
वो उनकी जफाएँ हो या खुद अपनी वफाएँ
ये राज़ हैं गैरों को सुनाये नहीं जाते
ये राज़ हैं गैरों को सुनाये नहीं जाते
ये रंज जुदाई के

कब तक दिल ए बीमार को दूँ झूठी तस्सली॰॰ई
कब तक दिल ए बीमार को दूँ झूठी तस्सली॰॰ई
झूठी तस्सली
अब जान से छूटें भी तो हाए नहीं जाते
अब जान से छूटें भी तो हाए नहीं जाते
ये रंज जुदाई के