11 April : The voice that touched our soul forever

The first superstar of Indian film industry, Kundal Lal Saigal popularly known as K L Saigal, was born today in 1904.

He was renowned Singer and Actor of early times. We all remember and sing his songs even today. Let’s remember him with some of his best works of all times.

• His singing talent was natural and without any kind of formal training.
• He will always be remembered for his contribution of just 185 songs in which 142 were film songs and 43 were non-filmy. He sang two songs for his Tamil film too.
• Saigal dropped out of school and started earning money by working as a railway timekeeper.
• Later, he joined Ramington Typewriter Company as a salesman.
• During the salesman ship, he used to visit the different parts of the country.
• It helped Kundan to polish his singing talent.
• Selling the typewriter, he reached Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1930, where he met music director RC Boral.
• Boral recognised his talent and hired him on contract basis. At that time singing talent was must for actor to get the role as it playback singing was not started yet.
• During his times, film industry was based in Kolkata, which was later shifted to Mumbai.
• KL Saigal was the first to get royalty on songs.
• Saigal was the first to introduce recitative renditions — the union of song and speech.
• He is probably the only singer in the world, whose songs were aired daily at a particular time (7.57 am to 8 am) on a Sri Lankan Radio station for 47 years.

#Hindi