The Timeless Tune: How All India Radio's signature tune echoes through generations

Most of us have listened to All India Radio’s signature tune at the beginning of transmission but very few know its history. Amrit Ganger’s book “The Music That Still Rings At Dawn, Every Dawn” throws an interesting light on this. The signature Tune was composed by German Musician Walter Kaufman. Abject war conditions and Hitler’s fascist rule forced Kaufman, a Prague immigrant (Czech) to move to Bombay in 1934 with a return ticket. But, 27-year-old Kaufman stayed in Bombay for the next 12 years. His excellent mastery over Western Music got him a job as the Director Of Western music in All India Radio. During this period he composed AIR’s Signature tune. Noted Indian orchestra conductor Mehli Mehta, the father of great maestro Zubin Mehta played violin for it. Kaufman also composed background scores for Hindi films such as Mazdoor (The Mill, 1934), Jagran(The Awakening, 1935) and Prem Nagar (City Of Love, 1935). He was also associated with the Bombay Chamber Music Society and conducted 600 concerts before he moved to Indiana University in the United States. During his stay in Bombay Kaufman would live in Rewa House, a two-storied bungalow off Warden Road (now Bhulabhai Desai Road) towards Mahalakshmi temple!

The signature tune is not just the beginning of transmission but a test process for engineers. Through this, they taste that the frequency of transmitter is proper and the strength of the station is correct in kilowatts. Those were the days when radio was the only source of entertainment information and education people would keep the radio on even before the broadcast of a signature tune and one could see a big relaxation on their faces. That was the craze for radio to the listeners. Despite the world being flooded with TV Channels radio still exists. Radio is on in billions of cars throughout the globe. There are still lakhs of Radio listeners clubs across India whose members are sending requests through letters to listen to songs announcing their names. Thousands of request letters are still poured in All India Radio Stations across the Country. The letters are kept as records. In the present days of mobile and video talks, letter writing has tremendously gone down but request letters for AIR are filling the gap. Over the years there has been tremendous technological changes have occurred during a century. From Short wave to medium wave and then over to FM with stereo sound and clarity and process is still on. Come what may radio Will never die.