Shankar Jaikishan’s love affair with the accordion began with their first movie, Barsaat, and continued through their career. It featured in the majority of their compositions, playing a significant role. Whether it was in the prelude, interlude, postlude or counter melody, the accordion gave that special touch to a SJ composition. Hence, one could easily identify a song by the composer duo. The instrument held a prominent place in the Hindi film music during the fifties and the sixties. But, with the advent of the synthesizers, it slowly faded away.
During the course of their career, SJ had several accordionists play in their orchestra. Some of them are, Balsara, Goody Servai, Sumit Mitra, Ravachand, Dheeraj Dhanak, K. Bharat, Arun Paudwal and Enoch Daniels. Each of these musicians have contributed enough to make the accordion popular in SJ songs to become one of their signature instruments. Shankar fell in love with the instrument and became a self-taught accordionist as well.
Seen in the picture below are Shankar and ace accordion player, Sumitra Mitra, at one of SJ’s live concerts.
