The iTrans Song Book

 

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The iTrans Song Book or ISB is a Web-based collection of Indian-language (mostly Hindi or Urdu) song lyrics in the iTrans transcription scheme devised by Avinash Chopde. Around 3,000 songs are available from the many ISB-related sites:

  • The original iTrans Song Book site was put together by Anurag Shankar. It differs from the later sites in that it contains both Marathi and Hindi songs, and even poems and other documents in English, Urdu, and Sanskrit. This makes the site still valuable, though it is no longer updated.
  • The Forthcoming Additions to the ISB site, maintained by Rajiv Shridhar, also is not being updated any more. It has been superseded by some of the sites listed below.
  • Navin Kabra's Archive of Hindi Movie Songs offers a first-rate searchable index to the songs at the above two sites, though it leaves out non-Hindi songs.
  • The excellent and resolutely democratic shatataarakaa site provides lyrics of several Marathi abhangs, film songs, naaTyapads, bhaavagiit, etc., and includes RealAudio files of some songs.
  • Nita Awatramani's GEETanjali site has the lyrics of several Hindi songs that haven't yet made it into the ISB.
  • Prithviraj Dasgupta maintains a page called Hemant Kumar: A Genius in his Niche, which has the lyrics to many film and non-film songs by this singer. Most but not all the lyrics are in iTrans format.
  • Srinivas Ganti maintains an S. D. Burman page, which has the lyrics to some of the composer's Hindi film songs.
  • Hrishi Dixit archives a series called Latanjali, which focuses exclusively on the songs of Lata Mangeshkar. The series was initiated by Anil Hingorani.
  • A few Gujarati songs can be found on this page maintained by I. Shukla.
  • The most comprehensive site for Hindi and Urdu songs is the Consolidated ISB, which is maintained and regularly updated by Vijay Kumar. Songs from many of the other sites are eventually incorporated into new releases of the Consolidated ISB. However, the Consolidated ISB does not include any songs in the other languages.
  • Avinash Chopde, the originator of iTrans, mirrors the Consolidated ISB and the Marathi songs from the original ISB at his own site. Apparently the mirror of the C-ISB is a couple of releases behind the C-ISB itself, though.
  • Finally, Surajit Bose's Fill In The Blanks site, of which this page is a portion, supplies missing stanzas in cases where the Consolidated ISB does not have complete versions of some songs. Full versions of many but not all of the songs on this site have found their way into the Consolidated ISB, since Vijay Kumar checks the FITB site when he prepares new versions of the Consolidated ISB.
There are other Indian lyrics sites on the Web, of course, but this listing restricts itself to those sites that use iTrans.If there are other iTrans song sites that ought to be included here, please e-mail me.

 

Last modified May 23, 2001