Music And Movies

  ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10 ,  Part 11 ,  Part 12 ,  Part 13 ,  Part 14 ,  Part 15  & Part 16 ) In 1992, A R Rahman made a sensational debut with the movie, 'Roja'. Rahman's emergence changed the way things were done in the music field. The way the songs were recorded changed as did the quality of the recording. People were stunned by the new crystal clear sound they heard. Not just the recording but other facets of music making changed as well. Synthesizers were used heavily and the dependence of real instruments started decreasing. Loops and samples could be bought and integrated into music. Technology enable functions like auto tuning, which meant that a less than perfect pitch could be corrected. Each track could be recorded separately and the singers need not sing the whole song in one shot. They can record line by line. The last aspect would have a ma

  ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10 ,  Part 11 ,  Part 12 ,  Part 13 ,  Part 14  & Part 15 ) Attribution: Most of the non-Raja songs in this post are courtesy my friend A R Venkatesh, a great music lover of Kannada and Tamil film music. ( @arvenky on Twitter). My knowledge of SPB songs in Kannada is limited mainly to Raja songs and to some well known hits of Rajan Nagendra (which were also remade in Telugu). I have Venky to thank for this post. I have also included his comment on SPB's dominance of Kannada film music. In Telugu film music, we saw that it was a struggle for SPB to be accepted after Gantasala's passing away. In case of Tamil film music, the emergence of Raja helped SPB a lot. In case of Kannada film music, SPB's entry was natural. Before SPB came into the picture, the most popular Kannada male singer was P.B.Srinivas. He was known for his melodious

  ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10 ,  Part 11 ,  Part 12 ,  Part 13  & Part 14 ) Starting the beginning of 80s and all the way to the mid 90s, SPB dominated the musical landscape of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. In case of Malayalam, Yesudas was the immovable legend and as with Hindi, SPB's Malayalam diction wasn't as good as his Tamil or Kannada diction. Even with the three languages, SPB's domination was complete in case of the Telugu film industry. In case of Tamil, though SPB sang the most songs by a male singer during those years, the man dominating Tamil film music was Illayaraja. We had lots of famous films in which SPB's voice did not feature. Others like Yesudas, Malaysia Vasudevan, Jayachandran and later Mano, also featured in Illayaraja's songs prominently. In case of Kannada, Dr.Rajkumar sang for himself. For everyone else, SPB was the preferred v

( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10 ,  Part 11 ,  Part 12  & Part 13 ) Versatility - Part 2 In the last post, we looked at some songs which showcase the versatility of SPB in singing modern songs, high energy songs, emotional climax songs and songs that needs a softness of touch. That was quite a range but that was not all. In this post we will look at some more aspects of SPB's singing with the songs he sang for Raja in the 1980s are examples. A genre of songs which SPB was famous even before he started singing for Raja was the comic songs genre. We had in one of the initial posts observed how SPB would mimic the voice of a comedian like Allu Ramalingiah. Raja used SPB for many comic songs. Let us look at a few of them here. 'randi randi randi' from 'Rudraveena' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlbRxxnmzII The whole song is structured as a comic song and here

  ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10 ,  Part 11  & Part 12 ) The versatility 1 As I stated in the earlier, SPB of the 80s was a well formed,confident singer with a unique style of his own. His association with Raja in the 80s helped him in two ways: One, he got to sing a lot of popular numbers, which ensured he took his rightful place in the hearts of the people. Two, Raja gave him songs which pushed him hard and ensured that SPB was able to showcase his versatility to the world. In this article we will talk about how Raja used SPB versatile singing to give us some everlasting numbers. Before I begin the analysis, let me also state that though SPB was the foremost singer in Tamil, he did dominate the Tamil film music landscape the way he did in Telugu and Kannada. Raja loosely followed this pattern of giving Yesudas songs which had a lot of Carnatic music flavor, Malaysia Vasud

  ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9 ,   Part 10  & Part 11 ) We have seen the emergence of Illayaraja in an earlier part. By the beginning of 1980s he had established himself as the foremost music director of Tamil film industry. Veterans like MSV were fading and the other music directors of that era like Shankar Ganesh, Chandrabose and others could not match up to the quality that Raja was delivering.  In the 1980s, SPB had also found his style. This was the culmination of more than a decade of singing. SPB was now extremely confident of himself and his style. With the veteran actors slowly fading from both Tamil and Telugu film industry, SPB, who was the voice of the new generation of actors, was in high demand across languages.  In the next couple of posts, we will not have much to discuss about SPB's singing since it remained quite uniform across the decade. What we will do is tha

  (SPB with Salman Khan) ( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,   Part 9  & Part 10 ) K. Balachander made 'Maro Charitra' in Telugu and it became a super hit, not only in Andhra Pradesh but also in Madras. The songs of MSV were top class. He had used four female singers in it. Susheela, Janaki, Vani Jayaram and L R Eswari. The lone male singer was SPB. Balachander now wanted to remake this in Hindi. Since MSV was not well known in Hindi, he had to chose a popular Hindi music director. He chose Laxmikant Pyarelal as the music director. Balachander wanted SPB to sing for Kamal in Hindi as well. Balachander had always been a great supporter of SPB. Over and above that since Kamal was playing a role of a Tamil boy who did not know Hindi, he probably felt that SPB would be the apt singer. The only problem was the LP, as Laxmikanth Payarelal were known, were not in favor of SPB. Balachander persiste