Music And Movies

Last week I spoke about some lovely songs not getting their due because of being overshadowed by other hit songs from the same movie. That is atleast better. Many a times artists don't get their due because they are overshadowed by other artists of equal stature who are more popular. If the overshadowed artist has the required quality, he / she will have to keep working hard and wait patiently for their time to come. And come it will. Whatever I said above, applies to many artists but the person I had in mind was S.Janaki. She was an extremely talent singer but during the 60s and for most of the 70s, she was in the periphery as far as Tamil and Telugu films were concerned. She did have a decent run in Kannada and Malayalam films but success in Tamil and Telugu films eluded her. The most dominant music directors of those days, Vishwanath-Ramamurthy and later Vishwanathan in Tamil and Rajeshwar Rao, Pendyala, K V Mahadevan in Telugu all swore by P.Susheela. To her credit, Susheela

My roommate Siva was slowly waking from his afternoon slumber when the announcer on the radio said in Hindi, "The next song is from the film Madhumati. Written by Shailendra and sung by Lata Manageshkar, the song is..", "Aaja re pardesi", I said. "..zulmi sang aankh ladi" said the announcer. I turned to Siva and said loudly, "What?".  I thought I knew all the songs of Madhumathi. How could you not since each was a major 'hit' in its own right. The lilting "Suhana Safar" in Mukesh's voice, the poignant "Aaja Re Pardesi", the funny "Paapi Bichuva", the sad "Toote Hue Khwabonein", and very rhythmic "Dil Tadap Tadap" and "Ghadi Ghadi More Dil Dadke". But I had not heard of this "zulmi sang". So I asked Siva, "Why the hell aren't they airing 'aaja re pardesi'? Which song is this?" "The best song in that movie", retorted Siva. "What?&