Thoughts on Music, Movies and Literature

-
This is my attempt to give my thoughts on Music, Movies and Literature. I am hoping that this would be a good place to interact with lot of people.

My interests lie in all sorts of music but primarily in Carnatic Music. I like to watch the Art house films and comedy films. In books, I prefer serious literature and detective novels.

I will start posting on these topics and other topics soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

M S Subbulakshmi : Who misunderstood her?

-
Image
In the October 1st 2015 issue of Caravan, Vidwan T.M.Krishna wrote a lengthy article about M.S.Subbulakshmi titled, 'MS Understood' with the subtitle 'The Myths and Misconceptions around India's most acclaimed musician'.  This is a long read and spans 10 pages. You can read the complete article here Krishna, as his wont, makes lot of sweeping generalizations and hand waving arguments. I just want to react to a few aspects of his article. First, Krishna starts with a straw man, with some unknown singer stating that MS was a hoax. Then Krishna goes on to elaborate on how critics never considered MS to be a great singer and thought that she was just a singer with a ‘good voice’.  Krishna then traces MS’s origins and talks about how her music changed, how the society affected her and how she could not realize her complete potential and so on. You can read all that in the article. Once you have read the article you will understand what I am saying here more cle
Read more

One song at a time - 24. Naadamaya E Lokavella

-
Image
(Dr.Rajkumar) "Does Rajkumar sing?" asked the assistant. The music director nodded, "Muthuraju? Yes, he sings." "So why don't we ask him to sing this song in the movie?" suggested the assistant. The music director wasn't sure but the assistant persisted. Finally the music director agreed, Dr.Rajkumar sang in that movie and as the cliche goes, the rest was history. The music director was G.K.Venkatesh and the assistant went by the name of Rasayya. He would later be rechristened by Panju Arunachalam as Illayaraja!!! During my school days I had a classmate who used to love Rajkumar's voice and would tell us that Rajkumar was a great singer. It was not until I moved to Bangalore that I first heard Dr.Rajkumar's voice and the first song that I heard was a stunner. That was 'Nadamaya E Loka'. Later I came to know that this song won Dr.Rajkumar, affectionately called 'Annavaru', the National Award for the best singer. T
Read more

SPB: A Musical History - Part 1 : A Legend called Ghantasala

-
Image
Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao (Photo source: Quora) I plan to do a multi part series on SPB, tracing his music career in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film music. I will not be concentrating on other aspects of SPB like his acting or dubbing career. I will occasionally be making reference to some of the singing shows he did for different TV Channels. You must be surprised as to why the first part of this series is titled, ' A Legend called Ghantasala'. The idea is to give you a picture about the Telugu film music scene when SPB made his appearance. He recorded his first song for 'Sree Sree Maryadaramanna' in Dec 1966 (according to Wiki). The movie is listed as a 1967 release. So we can say that people heard SPB first in 1967. In 1967, the leading stars of Telugu films were N T Rama Rao (NTR) and Akkineni Nageshwar Rao (ANR). Actor Krishna was making his mark. The popular music directors included K V Mahadevan, S Rajeshwar Rao, Pendyala Nageshwar Rao. Other music directors li
Read more