Music, The Universal Language

Watch this :) Awaara like you've never heard before.

Seems, Awaara and Raj Kapoor were famous not only in Russia, as I had previously known, but also in Turkey.

The chemistry between Nargis & Kapoor is so palpable. Makes me almost want to go see Awaara & Shree 420 again NOW! One of my best-ever romantic scenes in any movie is Nargis and Raj Kapoor under that umbrella in the rain in Shree 420. Pyaar ho jaayein! :)



Back to Turkey & Awara...

Inspired song this .... hear! Also, its remixed version.


Also this Turkish TV dance recital to Mukesh's voice!

And this dancing at a Turkish wedding to the Turkish version of the song! (The lady in turquoise blue is positively drunk or high! ;))

Seems they even remade the movie named "Avare", released in 1964 and *ing Sadri Alisik and Ajda Pekkan.

I gleaned all the above from a blog post by Quizman/Arun Simha. He's also posted about it at the rec.indian.music.misc newsgroup.

There's more fascinating comments in the IMDB entry for Raj Kapoor's 'Awaara'.

Excerpts:

==
1. When I was little, my grandmother often told me about a movie from her younger ages - Awaara /released as Bradyaga/. She was always telling me, that when it came to Bulgaria it was a total hit. People watched it more that 20 times! (especially the gypsies, who thought of Indian people as their ancestors). If I ask somebody, who is over 50year old about that film, I am sure, that he will remember it. And when the main actor - Raj Kapoor visited the country, thousands of people traveled to see him. My grandma, who was one of the best portrait photographers at that time and was asked to make his pictures with the leaders of the country, remembers that he and his wife never acted like international movie stars. They met with ordinary people, visited hospitals and orphanages. Why was that film so special? Especially in Bulgaria - a country on a Balcan peninsula with such a different culture from India? First of all, it was so different from the Soviet films that were broad-casted at that time. It was full of life, passion, love, music, and nevertheless - it was a social film - about the problems of the different classes. And it made a country so far away close. It was the first step for the good relationships between our two countries.

2. This movie is itself a legend. In 1988 TRT (Turkish national television) was to show that film. As I was a little child I could notnow about the movies but that day my mother, grandmother, my uncleswife all got together and prepared delicious foods, and watched thatmovie on TV. Perhabs on that day all women in Turkiye were watching that film.

Mavi Boncuk, a delicious movie has reference to this film. On that movie Munir Ozkul says: - Aaah Awaara (at the time he looks toAwaara's poster) I've grown my children by selling it's tickets, played for 6 months on those days.

It is a fact that Awaara was a great success, on those days a film was playing for only a week but Awaara was in vision for 6 great months.

Fascinating stuff. Music & the movies are indeed the universal lanugage.

P.S.  the lyrics in this song from Sangam is hilarious. I guess the lyrics translate karne bore hua Turkish translator ko :)