Ameen Sayani (1932-2024): The Golden Voice

“THE BEST RADIO programme,” the legendary radio presenter Ameen Sayani once told an interviewer, “is the one you can see.” Ra­dio is an aural medium. But when Sayani came on the radio every Wednes­day at 8PM, emptying streets in a recently independent India the way, it is said, the Doordarshan TV shows Ramayan and Mahabharat would do many decades down the line, he showed that the radio could be so much more. It could, in the warm and affectionate voice of Sayani, paint you a picture, enliven you with an anecdote, and make you feel you were listening to—per­haps even seeing—a close friend or relative who just didn’t visit you enough.

People came for the songs on his show Binaca (later Cibaca) Geetmala, but they stayed back for him.

Sayani, who died recently from a cardiac arrest at the age of 91, was arguably India’s most famous radio personality. His show Geetmala, where he presented popular Hindi film music to listeners from 1952 to 1994, mainly over Radio Ceylon and later over Vividh Bharati (All India Radio), became something of a cultural touchstone.

Born in 1932, into a Gujarati household in Mumbai that was associated with the freedom struggle, the world of Hindi radio programming and film music must have appeared a remote future for the young Sayani. His father Jan Mohammad Sayani, a physician, cared for wounded activists during the freedom struggle. His mother, Kulsum, who championed women’s education and was involved in literacy drives (and even won a Padma Shri for her efforts in 1960), brought out a fortnightly titled Rahber. This publication—which Ameen Sayani too helped out with—was in a blend of Hindi and Urdu called the Hindustani language (using the Devanagari, Urdu and Gujarati scripts) that Mahatma Gandhi championed as a way to bind the country together, and move away from the tendency in Hindi and Urdu to become more insular languages. Using language and culture to move away from ossified structures and formalism in favour of assimilation and plain speech was an impulse Sayani carried over to his later days as a radio presenter. Unlike other broadcasters then who tended to be stuffy and serious, Sayani was convivial and charming, talking in the language of the masses.

Sayani’s entry into radio wasn’t smooth. When he approached his brother Hamid Sayani, then employed with Radio Ceylon, for work, the latter declined, pointing to Sayani’s English and Gujarati accents in his speech. An opportunity however arose when an announcer did not show up to record an ad one day. Sayani began by recording ads before he got the chance to host his own show.

There was more than a fair share of luck going Sayani’s way. India had only recently become independent, and state-controlled media like All India Radio (AIR) were looking at defining and forging the idea of a national culture. BV Keskar, a classical music purist, who was appointed the information and broadcasting minister, found Hindi film music to be vulgar and banned it on AIR in 1952. Radio Ceylon, broadcast on Sri Lankan airwaves, wasn’t a very popular radio station in India then. But that changed after the ban and the arrival of Geetmala. Radio Ceylon had three shortwave transmitters and its signals reached, it is said, across Asia, and even right up to the east coast of Africa.

At first, Geetmala was conceptualised as a half-an-hour programme where seven film songs were played at random, with a cash prize available for listeners who put the songs in chronological order of their release dates. “…we were expecting 40–50 letters initially. The very first programme… brought in 9,000 letters. Everyone jumped for joy and so did I, and then I sat down holding my head. I had to sit alone and check every single letter… Within a year, the mail shot up to 65,000 a week and it was impossible to carry on,” Sayani told the writer and academic Aswin Punathambekar in 2008. The show was then reconceptualised as a countdown to the most popular songs of that week. Its popularity soared even more.

Sayani worked on many more shows, apart from Geetmala. He is believed to have produced and hosted over 54,000 radio programmes and 19,000 jingles.

With his death, a glorious chapter of radio in India, comes to an end.

Ameen SayaniBinaca Geetmaladeathfreedom struggleobituaryradio broadcasting