Goonj Uthi Shehnai (1959)

A successful romance featuring a classical shehnai musician. Kishen (R. Kumar) is a musical prodigy in love with Gopi (Ameeta). Their union is opposed by Gopi’s widowed mother Jamuna (Mishra) and by Kishen’s adopted music teacher Raghunath (Ulhas) whose daughter Ramkali (Guha) secretly loves the musician. Later, when Kishen is a famous radio musician, his benefactor Shekhar (Bhansali) marries Gopi. In several scenes, the love-stricken Kishen vows never again to play the instrument with which he had wooed Gopi and he drowns his sorrows in alcohol. The film’s main asset is the extensive use of the shehnai instrument, performed in playback by 20th C. India’s best-known shehnai maestro, Bismillah Khan. In order to try to match the music’s classical authenticity, an attempt was made to present the story as a medieval Sanskrit love legend.