Apne Geet- Our Own Songs
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Song and music play a vitally important role in the preservation and transmittal of culture to coming generations. For this reason, the text of songs must be correctly preserved, so that people who do not have the facility to learn to read and understand the original language (in this case, Hindi), will still have the benefit of knowing and singing these ballads intelligently, and feel confident about the import and beauty of their songs.
With this in mind, a book of Hindi songs, being the first of its kind, called Atma Geet, was prepared and published, as follows:
1st edition in 1972 by Guyana Arya Pratinidhi Sabha
2nd edition in 1986 by Arya Samaj USA [New York]
3rd edition in 1988 by Arya Spiritual Center [New York]
4th edition in 2003 by Maharshi Dayananda Gurukula [New York]
It is now forty-five years since Atma Geet was first published. The Arya-Hindu community worldwide has made commendable use of that text.
However, in my missionary travels during the past ten years, I sensed that people had outgrown the songs of Atma Geet and now looking for new songs, especially those sung in popular Hindi film tunes. To satisfy the needs of people, I started collecting new songs for subsequent publication. Listening to professional singers, perusing songbooks of famous composers, and listening to old Hindi film songs on YouTube, I have successfully transliterated and translated approximately 400 new songs. They are now presented in this second songbook, called Apne Geet – Your Own Songs. It is meant to serve as a companion book to the Atma Geet.
Dr Satish Prakash