From Do Bigha Zameen, a search for Polyushko Polye!

Song: Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke
Movie: Do Bigha Zameen (Hindi, 1953)
Singers: Manna Dey, Lata Mangeshkar
Music Director: Salil Chowdhury
Actors: Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy
Director: Bimal Roy

I had long made a mental note to find out the inspiration for the song Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke from the Hindi movie Do Bigha Zameen (1953).  I had heard in the past that this song was inspired by some famous Soviet Red Army marching tune.  Besides “being” in this movie song, I had heard this (supposedly Soviet) tune used in one of the episodes of Nukkad, a briefly popular teleserial on Doordarshan in the 80′s.  Episode was one where a Nukkad character has to keep bi-cyling in a circle for as long as he can, for some cause (don’t remember what), and this tune is used by the crowd as an inspiration to keep him going.

Watch Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke:

Continuing from my previous post on Salilda, I was determined to find out which Soviet Red Army marching tune this one was.  My search terms included different combinations of “Do Bigha Zameen”, “Do Bigha Zamin”, “Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke”, “Russian Song”, “Russian Army Song”, “Soviet Red Army Marching Tune”, “Salil Chowdhury” but I did not get very far with any of these.  Nor did I find what I was looking for.  No thanks Google!

I did however get a reference to the Russian site – Soviet Music – that has an online library of songs from the Soviet era.  I tried to listen to as many songs – available as mp3′s – in the catalog but somewhere must have missed what I was looking for.  I then tried to look for the Soviet tune by humming and searching on sites such as midomi and shazam but no closer (was I) and definitely no cigars either!

Tired but not discouraged, I decided to send a mail to the site owner of Soviet Music.  So I did, send him a mail with a link to the Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke video on YouTube.  Cometh response, the very next day

“I tried, but I cannot recognize that song. :-( — Lake”.

Not what I was hoping to hear but the helpful tone of Lake’s e-mail encouraged me to look harder, perhaps, more closely .. the clue that was right in front of me all the time, viz., the video response posted by IndianBirdy, YT user, to the original Dharti Kahe song.  This video has a desi kid (presumably learning music) playing this tune on a bansuri.  Great!  May be, this will help isolate the tune from the Hindi lyrics so that ears not accustomed to Hindi music might be able to correlate with more familiar, native music.

So I sent one more mail to Lake with the bansuri link and prompt came his response:

“I’m not sure but maybe this one – http://www.sovmusic.ru/download.php?fname=polpol2“.

As I clicked the link and listened to the track start of with the sound of a horse trot, I knew it .. this is it!  Eureka, Voila, Wah re Wah, Nethi Adi, machAn – Bulls Eye!!! Can’t really explain the sense of exhilaration that this seemingly inconsequential and insignificant quest gave me at the end.  The likes of Christopher Columbus and Rocky Balboa might have identified with my state of mind .. India, India or Adrienne, Adrienne as the latter went!

Anti-climactically, it turns out what I was looking for is an extremely popular song, Polyushko Polye, that has versions and renditions in several languages.  duh! Below is one such version from the Russian Red Army Choir.

O Field, My Field (Polyushko Polye)

Once the key search term – Polyushko Polye – was established, it wasn’t hard to find different flavors of this song on YouTube. Below is a compiled playlist of the ones that I liked. Enjoy (the female track and the balalaika versions are very good):

Now that all the pieces have started to fit, even midomi returned meaningful results upon humming the original Russian version.  Before you click on any of the midomi results links remember these are friendly voices not intended to scare anyone ;=)

I also found this lone post linking the two songs and venturing to say how communist leanings of Salilda could have provided him access to Soviet culture way-back-when and the result is Dharti Kahe Pukar Ke!

Spasiba, Lake / Salilda / Soviet Music!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Jambajaar Talkies. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://svish.com Sneha

    You should’ve just mentioned it, Bala – allow me to introduce you to the encyclopedia of plagiarised Indian music: itwofs.com
    This particular song seems to be inspired by ‘Meadowlands’ composed by Lev Knipper! From itwofs.com:

    Lev Knipper initially wrote Meadowland as part of his 4th Symphony (Ballad of a Young Soldier), but since then, it has become a true folk-song. It talks of young soldiers going off to battle, saying goodbye to their wives, who are in tears, and sing about the long road that lies ahead of them.

  • http://www.inderstadt.net Bala Gopalan

    Ahhhh! The moment I feared.. who from my network was going to suddenly wake up and say why didn’t you ask me to begin with, I would’ve saved you the trouble!!!

    Sneha, the link you have shared looks very good. I will check it out in detail. But even in this (itwofs) site, the reference is only to Lev Knipper and Meadowland. And, no mention of Soviet or Russian music. No wonder, my searches failed.

    Truth be told, the journey to identify the source was quite an experience, like a very good treasure hunt .. so it was very satisfying in that regard. But like our friend, Mr.Point, keeps saying – the point of the journey is not to arrive ..

    Not sure if you checked out all the tracks in the playlist I have posted above. Some really impressive ones out there.