Keeping the melodies of old times alive, New Gramophone House at Chandni Chowk still awaits real music lovers. The shop, started in 1930 by Bhagwan Das Rajpal, remains the only hub of antique LP recorders and gramophones. The passage of time has rendered them obsolete, with people opting for newer, faster options. But nostalgia still beckons many who keep shops like the New Gramophone House going on. Even a meagre sale of LP records — two to five per day — and that of the LP recorders being just one in two to three months — hasn't been able to dampen the spirits of Anuj Rajpal, who is now guarding his grandfather's legacy. In the pre-Partition era, Bhagwan Das Rajpal had set up it up at Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore.
In this modern era of marketing which spells fierce competition, it indeed becomes a task to sustain oneself with no financial gains in sight.
LP recorders or Long Play recorders were the modern version of gramophones, which used electricity unlike the hand winding gramophones. LP recorders were manufactured from 1960 to 1993. A single LP record plays at 33 1/3 rpm (rotations per minute) for a 40-minute duration. A smaller version of the LP recorder is the EP (extended play), which plays for a 12-minute duration.
The shop has a stock of more than 50,000 records and a variety of about 10,000 songs from the films made between 1930 and 1993, ranging from vintage Indian to classic international numbers of the post 80s era.
One can get artistes from Mohammed Rafi, Manna De, Talat Mahmood, Mehdi Hasan, Begum Akhtar to Elvis Presley, Nat Cole King, Beatles, Abba and Michael Jackson at this lone destination. Even geographical aberrations cannot restrict real music lovers from getting their scoop of old numbers, who can buy the records online.
Moving beyond English and Hindi, it even boasts Hindustani classical, Bengali, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Haryanvi, Tamil and Telugu records.
A single LP record could cost anywhere between Rs.50 and 1000, depending on its antique value. A recorder is available within the price range of Rs.3000 to 10,000 depending on the make and model. It is easy to get swayed by modern strings but then classics are classics.
