One song at a time - 6. Rajeshwar Rao's Bilahari

                                      (S. Rajeshwar Rao)
Just like Begada which we spoke about a couple of posts back, Bilahari is another ragam which is not so easy to adapt to film music. It generally ends up showing its classical colours. Illayaraja had tuned a wonderful song in Bilahari, "koondalile megam" for the film, 'Balanagamma'. He also tuned "neethone aagena sangeetham" for 'Rudraveeena' in Bilahari. In both cases you can clearly see the classical aspect of Bilahari present in the song. I am sure there are quite a few Bilahari based songs if you dig deeper in time but I can also bet that the classical aspect would dominate in those songs.

Today, I am posting a song composed by S.Rajeshwar Rao, one of the great music directors of the Telugu Film industry. He has given enormous number of hits. Too numerous to enumerate here. From his songs you can see that he had a very good grasp on both the Carnatic as well as the Hindustani forms of classical music. We will definitely be seeing and hearing more of this great composers songs in this series. In this song, Rajeshwar Rao wonderfully 'lightens' Bilahari's classical load to create a delectable melody. The fact that a young and beautiful Jayapradha sings it, adds to the charm.

The song which I have chosen today is from the movie 'Ee Naati Ee Bandham Ae Naatido'. The scene is one of the typical dreams of all Indian males. His wife getting up early in the morning, drawing the rangoli, doing her tulasi puja, praying for the family and most importantly waking up the husband with coffee in hand, while the husband happily sleeps till late hours.  'muthyamantha pasupu', 'malargal nanaidhana' and host of other songs stand testimony to such dreams. Times have changed in urban India now and this song will bring a sigh out of all those males out there. You can just dream of such a scenario. This is not going to happen buddy. You better make that coffee yourself!!!