The golden voice of ‘Geetmala’ dies at 91
Iconic radio presenter Ameen Sayani passed away on Tuesday, February 20 of a heart attack, at the age of 91. His claim to fame is being the golden voice of the on-request song-playing radio programme, ‘Binaca Geetmala’.
The weekly programme ran from 1952 (December 3) to 1994, and was revived in the early noughties. It started on Radio Ceylon and later shifted to All India Radio’s Vividh Bharti.
The programme changed names over the decades—Binaca Geetmala to Hit Parade to Cibaca Geetmala—but never lost its essence.
Binaca Geetmala is arguably one of the longest-lasting and most influential radio programmes in the world. The voice that came to people’s homes across the country, beginning each programme with “Behno aur bhaiyo, aap ki khidmat me Ameen Sayani ka adaab (sisters and brothers, at your service, Ameen Sayani greets you)”, entranced the audience in a recently independent India.
What made his show an immediate super-hit was the fact that he eschewed seriousness and used a style and language that was accessible yet informative, unlike the other presenters of the period. The programme’s peak popularity years were from the mid-1950s to early 1970s, arguably the golden era of Hindi cinema.
As a voiceover artiste, he holds the records for hosting and compering over 54,000 radio programmes and for contributing to approximately 19,000 jingles.
His interactions with the stars of the golden era also had a big fan following—like when he asked Lata Mangeshkar difficult questions on royalty issues with Mohammad Rafi and on marriage, when Kishore Kumar interviewed himself on his show or his interview with Raj Kapoor.
