Shankar Jaikishan

Shankar Jaikishan, also known as S/J, is an Indian music composer duo in the Hindi film industry, working together from 1949–1971. Shankar-Jaikishan, along with other artists, wrote “everlasting” and “immortal melodies” in fifties and sixties. Their best work was noted for being “raga-based and having both lilt and sonority”.

Their early works include Awaara, Aah, Shree 420, Basant Bahar, Halaku, Patita, Kathputli Anari, Chori Chori, Daag, Baadshah, Boot Polish, and Ujala.

S-J were the “house composers” for RK Films and were on their pay-roll till the end. Raj Kapoor used to maintain a music bank where he stored compositions of S-J. Even after the termination of the professional association between Shankar and Raj Kapoor (Jaikishan had died by then), the latter had used a number of S-J’s earlier compositions (which were in his custody) for all his films though the credits were given officially to other composers, e.g., Laxmikant Pyarelal (Bobby, Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Prem Rog) and Ravindra Jain (Ram Teri Ganga Maili). S-J also worked with other stars like Shammi Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar, Dev Anand, Sunil Dutt, Kishore Kumar, Manoj Kumar, Biswajeet, Joy Mukherjee, Dharmendra & Manoj Kumar.