Music And Movies

I was there in Chennai for 4 days this season. My notes on this season - Attended the lecdems at Academy. The one about talas in Yaksha Gana was good. The konnakol lec dem following that was equally good. Two interesting incidents took place during these lec dems. After the Yaksha Gana lec dem Sanjay commented that though the speaker said the tala was jampa tala he was reckoning it as khanda capu. The speaker sheepish said that the way they reckoned it in Yaksha Gana was actually jampa as that he was as 5,5,5 because that was easier for him. After Konnakol demo, where the speaker spoke about how konnakol was known from Bharata's time, Pappu Venugopal Rao remarked, "There are two ways to do research. One is to come to a conclusion first and then look for evidence. The other is to first look for data and then come to conclusion based on data. Your's is the first variety and you presented it in an intelligent fashion" - Sowmya's lec dem was sort of letdown.

'vasantha panjami naalil' from 'Bhargavi Nilayam', the Baburaj Master's beauty, is a favorite of mine. One day while listening to this song on youtube I saw a comment which said that this song was inspired by a Marathi song, 'ek vaar panka varuni'. So I immediately searched for that song and I could see why the poster felt that way. While Baburaj's song is a classic in its own right, the Marathi song is an outstanding one as well. Youtube says the music is by Vasant Pawar and Sudhir Phadke. I am unable to get exactly who composed the song but the singer is undoubtedly Sudhir Phadke. The song can be classified in the 'soft melody' category and Sudhir Phadke sings it lovingly. His voices suits the overall tenor of the song. The way Kalyani is used in this song is delicious. I was hooked to this song the very first time I heard it and I keep hearing this often. When sounds have ceased and when you want to have darkness and loneliness of the n

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

In this final part let us examine the legacy of MSV. First, along with Ramamurthy, he was instrumental in modernizing Tamil film music. We have discussed a lot about this earlier. Later, MSV kept changing his style to suit the modern trends. In the 60s we saw how he embraced a more western style of orchestration. Later there was a slight change in style to take on the Hindi influence which was seeping into Tamil film music. As I had earlier indicated, MSV was probably the only one who was able to challenge the Hindi invasion. (Though I call it invasion, I personally feel that any good music coming from anywhere is fine.) He did his bit to give hit songs during those times and partially succeeded. His most important contribution to Tamil film music were ofcourse his melodies and the impact they left of the listening public. Not only on the listening public, they also had an impact of the MDs who followed MSV. We have already seen how Raja had to tune many songs in the MSV mold

MSV was so busy in Tamil films that he could rarely venture out of Tamil film industry. That was the conventional thinking. So I was surprised when I saw the list of Malayalam films for which MSV has provided music to. He seems to have done quite a bit in Malayalam. Here is a list :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Viswanathan_discography His Telugu output, which I heard often on radio, was less. The direct Telugu film output was even lesser. K V Mahadevan and Chakravarthy ruled the 70s. A lot K Balachander films got remade in Telugu and the songs were carried forward from Tamil. Yet in some cases, the songs became more popular in Telugu than Tamil. Vishwanathan Ramamurthy gave music for 'Tenali Ramakrishna'. I think this was made both in Tamil and Telugu. Their tuning of 'chandana charchita' is one of the most melodious ones that I have heard for this astapadhi. A Mohanam base with Susheela's sugary voice makes this an all time classic This song from

Illayaraja's entry was not the only new thing to happen to Tamil film world in the mid 1970s. It was also the time of change. The old order was slowly getting replaced by a new one. Gemini Ganesan, the king of romance, started fading as Kamal Hassan took over that space and was branded as the prince of romance. M G R would become the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1977 and give up on movies. In 'Aboorva Ragangal' Rajnikanth pushed open the gates, literally, and stepped into the Tamil film industry. Sivaji Ganesan was still a leading hero but slowly the newer heroes were replacing him in the box office. It was an era of change and MSV had to straddle two worlds. The world of Sivaji and MGR which demanded a certain standard sound and the world of Kamal and Rajni which wanted a newer sound. So in this period you will hear both sides of MSV, the traditional side and the modern one. We can take a couple of songs from 1976, the year Illayaraja entered, and see the above m

Illayaraja, who entered Tamil film music through 'Annakili' represents the biggest discontinuity in Indian Film Music thought. This may be difficult for people to accept. R D Burman or Rahman may come to your mind whenever people talk about a discontinuity. So let me put forth my hypothesis on why I consider Raja as a discontinuity and a break from our Indian film music tradition, We have already seen how both Hindi film music and South Indian film music both depended on Classical music of North and South respectively in their formative years. One of the important features of Indian Classical music is the centrality of the singer / instrumentalist. There have been some great accompaniment artist but even they are subservient to the main artist. This spills over into film music as well and for long the tune and the singer were of importance. The music director was basically a person who could set some wonderful tunes. They did not expect the music director to be well vers

Before we move further let us a take a overall look at how the Tamil Film Music scene was in the early 70s - starting from 1970 till 1975. This was the time when Hindi music penetrated deeply down South. As I had earlier mentioned R D Burman's new musical style was a major hit across India. It was not just R D Burman alone but other Hindi music directors of those times started giving hits in the R D Burman mold. Even if we forget the hit part of it, Hindi film music was richer compared to Tamil film music because it has space for other music directors with different styles. For example, in 1970, Madanmohan came up with 'Dastak', an outstanding film musically, which had some terrific Lata solos. Kalayanji Anandji in the same year had 'Safar', which has a couple of outstanding Kishore solos. In 1971 we had Salil Chaudhary coming up with an everlasting 'Anand', while Kanu Roy gave 'Anubhav'. S D Burman was also very active in this period giving f

As I said in the last part of this series, it is not right to assess MSV's music of the 70s just by the RD Burman influence. MSV did continue to give lots of hit melodies in his own style in the 70s. We will take a look at the melodies he gave in the first half of the 70s. Let us start with a song which can be taken to be the very definition of a humongous hit. It blared in the radio, it blared in what we call 'patti thotti', it blared in those 'kuzhai' speakers during festivals and to this day remains a major hit. From the movie, 'Pattikada Pattanama', 'ennadi rakamma' Any modern music director will immediately see the 'remix' potential of this song. (I checked youtube and yes it has been remixed. And no, I am not giving you the link). The energy is infectious and TMS rocks. This was in 1972. MSV followed this with another super hit song in 1973. This was an equally big hit. This is not an high energy song like the previous one

'Aradhana' released in 1969 was important in more ways than one. Rajesh Khanna became a super star. While Rafi and Kishore both sang for Rajesh Khanna in that movie, Kishore was chosen to be the voice of Rajesh Khanna. Kishore Kumar who had till then mostly sung for himself (when he was on screen) or for his friend Dev Anand, decided to become a full fledged singer. The R D Burman - Kishore Kumar - Rajesh Khanna combination would leave a huge impact on Hindi film music, which is felt even to this day. I am sure those in the know will tell me that 'Aradhana' was not by R D Burman but was by S D Burman. While it is true, many industry insiders are on record saying that S D Burman was not well during that time and R D composed some of the songs. Going by the style of S D Burman and the later style of R D Burman my guess is that 'mere sapno ki rani kab ayegi thu' and 'kora kagaz tha yeh mann mera' were probably R D's creations. Whatever be the e