Sivaranjani : The raga made for film songs

The close association of Indian film music with classical music and musicians in its formative years meant that a lot of classical ragas came to be used in film music. Very traditional ragas like Kalyani morphed themselves admirably to film music requirement. Universal ragas like Mohanam became natural candidates for film songs. In midst of all the classical ragas there seems to be one raga which is born for film music.

In Carnatic music, Sivaranjani is not featured very prominently even in the tail end tukkada section. Ragas like Sindhu Bhairavi, Mand, Revati and others dominate that portion of the concert. In film music, though, Sivaranjani has been used extensively and effectively by various music directors.

It is easy to associate Sivaranjani with pathos but the music directors were talented enough to take it beyond that emotion and were able to infuse a sense of joy into the raga.

The first Sivaranjani that I remember hearing was a song of pathos, from the movie, 'Mera Naam Joker'.  The movie was Rajkapoor's ambitious venture which flopped terribly and almost ruined him financially. The  songs scored by Shankar Jaikishedn were great hits (Yet Raj Kapoor had to move away from Shankar Jaikishen to Laxmikanth Pyarelal for his next movie 'Bobby'). Mukesh was a master in infusing pathos into a song and was definitely a great choice for this song. We must have heard this song on radio a zillion times.



The seond Sivaranjani I remember being impressed with was from the Telugu film 'Toorpu Paamara'. This was a remake of the Tamil film 'Aboorva Ragangal'. For this love song, Ramesh Naidu chose Sivaranjani and it was a humungous hit. Your day wasn't complete if you didn't hear this song ateast once on the radio. (Be careful. Narsimha Raju's bell bottom pants can distract your attention from the song)



The impact of the song was such that they made a movie called 'Sivaranjani' and asked Ramesh Naidu to tune for that movie as well. Ramesh Naidu summoned Sivaranjani and Balu again to create the pallavi of another super hit song, 'abhinava tharavo'. (The song is a ragamalika though)



Much before Ramesh Naidu used Sivaranjani for a love song, Shankar Jaikishen had paved way by composing super hit love songs based on this raga.

From the movie, 'Suraj', here is 'Baharon Phool Barsao'



And from film 'Brahmachari' the ever famous Shammi Kapoor song, 'Dil Ke Jharokhon Mein'. A sad love song.



And if you take into account that Shankar Jaikishen also tuned 'awaz dheke thume hum bulao', we can clearly tag Shankar Jaikishen as pioneers in the usage of this raga in Hindi film music. The path they laid helped a lot of music directors later.

Laxmikanth Pyarelal were one such music directors who used Sivaranjani to create a major hit song. Not my favorite though but in those days you could not have escaped this song. It resouned in every gully. From the movie 'Ek Dujhe Ke Liye' in the voice of Lata. (This movie's success made Kamalhasan dream of superstardom in Hindi but it was not to be.)



R D Burman took up this raga and gave it a different color in the voice of Kishore Kumar. The languid pace that is characteristic of so many RD songs lends gravitas to this song as does the voice of Kishorda. (Rajesh Khanna's guitar strumming is hilarious though)



In Telugu film music you had Gantasala give this energetic love song based on Sivaranjani



Malayalam Sangeetham lists a lot of Sivaranjani based Malayalam film songs but I haven't heard most of them. Of the songs listed there I have heard two of them and both been tuned by Ravindran Master.

The lovely 'Thenum Vayambum' from the movie of the same name, in the voice of Yesudas. Does start as Sivaranjani but deviates a lot later so cannot really classify as Sivaranjani.



The other song is 'ezhu swarangalul' from the movie 'Chiriyo Chiri'. Yesudas once again. You can easily deduce that this would be a competition favorite. You do hear it in many singing competitions.



Salilda gave an outstanding Sivaranjani in the Tamil film 'Azhiyadha Kolangal', 'poo vannam'



Let me end with an haunting song tuned by Hemanth Kumar for the film, 'Bees Saal Baad', 'kahin deep jale kahin dil'. This later became a template for many a haunting song



The richness of imagination of the film music directors when it comes to Sivaranjani was not matched by their classical counterparts.



Some of you may be wondering why there is no song of Illayaraja in this list. Raja has done so much with Sivaranjani that it requires a separate blog post. And so I wrote one. You can read 'Raja and Sivaranjani' here