History of Harmonica Part II

History of Harmonica - BBC documentary

Recently BBC made a wonderful documentary on the history of Harmonica. It seems that someone just uploaded the whole documentary in 8 parts and you can start watching it starting with Part I at :

Aao Huzoor Tumko

Prabhakar Bhatt is one of the finest players of Harmonica in Baroda. He was invited by the Harmonica Club of Gujarat to perform at a function in Ahmedabad recently. Here is the rendition of the song Aao Huzoor Tumko Sitaro Mein Le Chalu, composed by OP Nayyar and sung by Asha Bhonsle:

Aa chal ke tujhe mein le ke chalu

Arvind Kumar works for the Indian Postal Service as a senior executive. But, that's his job. His passion is mouth organ. He is so passionate about this handy musical instrument that he plays it every day. He is also an excellent comperer, sprinkling his speech with Urdu couplets. I am sure you would have listened to his welcome speech given in the previous post. Now, listen to his mouth organ:

Meeting of Hearts: Baroda Photo Gallery

Harmonica players of Baroda and Ahmedabad joined hands to spread melody of harmony on the evening of July 6,2008, Sunday, at Baroda's Kamati Baug's bandstand. Some vignettes:

Rock, Rock, Rock, Mr. TD Joshi

At 69, Mr. TD Joshi still rocks with his harmonica. He has been playing mouth organ for more than 50 years now.

Baroda Players Extend Warm Welcome, Join Club

Players of Baroda invited the members from Ahmedabad to play with them at the Kamati Baug Bandstand on Sunday to spread the message of harmony and unity. The video is of the welcoming speech by Arvind Kumar

Pyaar Ki Aag Mein Jalte Rahe

I chanced to come across this piece played by the Adler Trio when I realized the same tune was copied by a Hindi film music director in the song Pyaar Ki Aag Mein Jalte Rahe:

We walk hand in hand

The harmonica players of Baroda, a highly talented and enthusiastic lot, invited members of the Harmonica Club of Gujarat, to play with them at the Kamati Baug Bandstand, a centrally located place of this cultural capital of Gujarat, on Sunday evening.

The public garden was full of Sunday crowd - men, women and children. The weather was pleasant as it was a clouded sky. The Baroda players gave us a warm welcome and soon we started to play, all sitting in a circle. It was a novel sight for the Sunday merry makers who formed a circle around us. Each one of us played a couple of songs to a thunderous applause from the spectators.

We will be soon uploading the video recording of the Baroda evening on this blog.

The Baroda players unanimously elected Apurva Bhatt to represent them in the Harmonica Club of Gujarat, as a Trustee. Apurva Bhatt has trained over a dozen harmonica players of the city, many of them have now become trainers to teach playing this musical instrument to young boys and girls.

The Adler Trio

Here are some samples of western music played on harmonica: