#AIR: interesting station with brillant music.

(written Sept 18 )

Another intersting shortwave station with great music :AIR /India

Includes also some interesting influence on Bollywood in Greece wand my personal story

All India Radio as you know is one of the stations with strong presence in shortwaves first because of their domestic services and abroad in many languages.

I was and still am a fan of their music many years ago ,at least since 70s. when I fist started listening to the shortwaves. You may add Pakistan an also easy catch in Greece which has a nearly similar music previous times and also Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that has a minimal presence in shortwaves today just to add the counties with nearly similar music .

Frequencies are in all bands and for all times . From these I can remind myself into 15770 KHz with indo program (no times remembered ) 9910 11620 towards Europe in various languages on local afternoons and nights that are still used and more recently 7550. 10300 for Vivid Bharati an easy catch replaced 'recently' by the more difficult 9865 .Add also 11560/70 for Pakistan older times till they stopped several years ago. Also to name for Bangla radio on 7255 and 15MHz during 2018 ad SLBC on 11905 in a more generic way . Add also the more recent freq 9380 for AIR and Vivid Bharati heard first at 2017.

Today (2018-9) 9910 and 11620 are now not so easy to listen due to propagation . 7550 KHz heard after 1745 is generally clear though for some time there is a interference on 7545 a FSK service and 7556 a FDM type service . 9865 has strong QRM from both side bands and requires pass bands of lower then 4 kHz for the best reception . 9440 is also not so clear as CRI in 9445 is hear here with nearly same signal levels that sometimes interfere into AIR' signal. However 9380 can be heard in the clear in most of the day, heard from 13Z00 to around 2200 in noise free places as Chalkidiki or mount Olympus. Local noise in the city can deteriorate reception with a S5 level at least with time of reception after 1500 till 2100

Due to the easiness of reception I have made very few recordings so far .The recently Identified song of Nayara Noor 'Rothe ho tum kaise ma non priya' is the best few songs recorded before 90s. Also two others found via satellite and cassettes are Silsila OST and Julie OST

Vivid Bharati was/is my favorite program that airs old Bollywood songs of 70s and then heard mostly in 9380 which is my main window for India Today

Surely India's most important export are their movies that are the most popular in the world and gained the hearts of the people in most areas of the planet include also Greece and African countries as far s I know since 91 my trip in Nigeria

However in our country the case was possibly more intense than any other country in the western world. That started since mid 50s for around 10-15 years when Indian movies overflowed our country making Greek people name the movie "Mother India" as the most impressive movie of the time which made them weeping and crying .As my father told me before, there were emote than 400 m of queues with people expecting to get cinema ticket for a 3.5+ hr movie. The most known movie actors were Nargis Madhubala and Zinguala but the two latter were passed in the greek songs of the time while nargis was he most famous ..Movies and music were the hit the lower Greek class, people immigrating back from Western Europe mostly poor workers after the country established political and economic stability .

Many Greek composers were influenced from numerous songs of the movies played in cinemas. Many of them were adapted or even copied in full from their originals . A part of these Greek songs are still eternal and also younger sing them . A researcher counted around 100 Indian songs with their Greek 'equivalents' in any form full copies adaptations and remixes that yielded around 200. Around 8 Greek songs have been adapted or copied back .One of them is the world famous 'guys of Piraeus' and little later (76) the song called bum Pam [pararam] entered India with the same title sung by Asha Bhosle. I heard that [and recorded] while I was in Spore on 89.These are my additions to the 3 referred in the book below

Some of the most known songs with titles in English with their originals are:

-madhubala Kazanjidis /aajo tarapt hai amar Lata Mangeshkar

-my pity heart Dionisiou /dunia ye ham aye hai (mother India ) Lata with 3 Greek versions!

-the sweetness of your lips Angelopoulos /Unji2 dunia ke devenale H kumar/ Dunia Syurga in indonesia !

(info fron the greek book 'Indolovers revelation ' ,As referred in te book most no westernized counties were very much influenced from Indian movies . the above listing is derived from 25 pages table )

The discussion about the Indian Greek music counter-exchange is too long to be discussed here The book describes with much detail in a fat 120 page A4 format book written in Greek only, It is a quite impressive research. I will not discuss it further as the story will go 'out of the rail' while I will try to depict my story with my poor Indian music interest by time

These Hindu Greek songs of the older generation effected also our generation though with lesser level. Hindi songs could be easily found in some booths on 70s together with Greek songs in big baskets outside or inside the music stores of the time. On 80-90s there was a new Endeavour in Indian music but the interest was poor in Greek population People prefer to listen to the music of the time i.e. po rock and easy listening Greek There was new try on 2005 by a Greek newspaper to provide free DVD movies from Bollywood but with small interest from the audience .

I have to once go backwards again with personal info . A trip for my parents in UAE on early 80s , they returned back with several video cassettes and music tapes with Pukar being the hit movie featuring the great Amit.I did the same while during my business leisure trips in UK on eighties where I bought some audio cassettes from Indian sellers in very low prices .

Same time during 80 I also liked to watch from Doordarshan by satellite , in C band and watch their Geetmala program (music video clips from various movies) .The signal used half transponder reception or it would get filled with strong noise . Around 90+ when Ku band was the norm several Indian TV channels started with general Indian program an also some radio stations that could be heard in free . Soon the TV channels were scrambled to my disappointment but not radio stations. I was absent from shortwaves that time. I made several satellite radio recordings that .included the marvelous song Julie.

This collection together with the tapes and shortwave recs later filled one less then half DVD.

An Indian seller from Athens was amused when I ordered a few VHS tapes on start of this century! They were for renting although the prices were exceptionally cheap for the Greek standards of that time . After discussions with some people in Indonesia (!) I bought original DVDs together with some Indonesian products. Add also to the list 14 movies offered by the newspaper 8 years later in three parts that yields around 40 movies, 8 of them 'duplicated'. That means separate DVD in Greek abd English Notice that since 1995 most newspapers used enclosures in their Sunday edition with books and CD/ DVDS something that still continues today.

Some of the most interesting movies are

-DVDs mixed with separate Greek and English subtitles Hum Tum /Kal ho Na ho /Devdas new /Kabhi khushi kabhi gham and Kuch kuch hota he which is my wife's favorite movie.

-DVDs only in English: Devdas old 60s version /Pinjar my favorite but I can also notice the fair Khaki /Pukar 83 with Amit and Pukar of 90s with Anil Kapur . Khaki is very short movie around 90 minutes.

As yo know today my interest favors Malay music I can occasionally listen to AIR or India Beat .Many older Malay songs are copies or poor variations of Indian music. Dangdut music of Indonesia older times (80-2000) albeit called Malay has also Indian music roots . India Beat a service of the Malay Astro network has relatively recent Indian music mainly of this century which has not the 'magic' of older Bollywood of 80s or even 90s and sounds mostly as easy listening or lounge There are however today hundreds of stations relayed via stream radio with good sound quality.

If you are interested there are many stations available via stream with Xiia the best application for your smartphone You may check one of the decades of frequencies of AIR in shortwaves . Just try starting from the frequencies stated above!

Alternatively you can check via your browser with the site radio garden adn chack forst via this page https://radio.garden/listen/2b-radio-gurbani/57vcMmXW which is radio gurbani . this site offers a geolocation system that coaancts to thousands of stations via a google maps way on earth

Some interesting drawings :

this is the signal tace of Vid Bharati as shown in the picture Normally a signal with nt very strong fades for the refered time

30 minute signal analysis of AIR on 7550 plus a smoothing level of 1 minute

A close up of 7550 fading curves

7380 OLder times - last year the signal of AIRon 7380 was much better than today > This year OCt 19 even at times that the signal could be much better seems wo things: or the station stopped transmissions or for the most possible using lower powers than before

The above signal levels are a bit higher than the local noise

and the fading closeup for the part of the recption time