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 ) 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.Rajku...

( 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...

  ( 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 giv...

(You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  , Part 7  ) The Telugu film music saw a gradual decline from the 1960s. The 1970s did provide good quality music but there was decline compared to the 1960s. The 1980s was an extremely bad period for Telugu saved by music directors from outside of the state, mainly Illayaraja. Otherwise the main music directors for Telugu films like Chakravarthy, in decline K V Mahadevan, J V Raghavulu et al produced lot of forgettable music. When I look back at the moves from 1981 to 1985, the percentage of movies which had good music is low.  Don't mistake me for that person who always feels 'Old is Gold'. The truth was that Tamil was having its most glorious period as far as film music goes. With Illayaraja at his peak, Tamil film music reached heights which no other film music was able to reach before or since. Malayalam too had good music directors in that er...

(MSV-SPB) You can read the earlier parts here: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6   Raja's coming to the scene happened at the right time. M S Viswanathan who was the dominant music director in Tamil was slowly losing his form. Let me say, his form became uneven in those time. If you look at the list of films that MSV did between 1976 and 1979, you will surprised that you have never heard of many of movies. The songs too were middling and forgettable. The other upcoming music directors at that time were Shankar Ganesh duo and Vijaybhaskar. V. Kumar too scored music for some films. Of these Shankar Ganesh would go on to score for lot of films. Like Chakravarthy in Telugu, they too would churn out tune after eminently forgettable tune. MSV though gave some amazing numbers in this period. What I was talking earlier was the percentage of good songs that he gave, which was getting lower. His combination with Balachander produced some melodies which are popular to t...

  (SPB, Ghantasala, P B Sreenivas) In Part 1 , we saw about the legend called Ghantasala who dominated the Telugu film industry. As I had mentioned, SPB had to be sing in such a way that people who were so used to Ghantasala's voice would accept his voice as well. His voice was in direct contrast to Ghantasala's voice. He had a 'soft' voice, a voice that was closer in tone to P B Srinivasa than to Ghantasala. Ghatntasala was well trained in classical music while SPB was a self taught singer and did not have any formal education. It was a formidable challenge that SPB had to overcome. SPB started his career singing for S P Kodandapani. Having heard him sing in some function, S P Kodadandapani approached SPB and told him that he would give him a chance to sing in films. SPB was skeptical since he didn't know who Kodandapani was. S P Kodandapani kept his word and in the year 1967 SPB recorded his first song for the movie, 'Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna".  This is th...

Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao (Photo source: Quora) I plan to do a multi part series on SPB, tracing his music career in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada film music. I will not be concentrating on other aspects of SPB like his acting or dubbing career. I will occasionally be making reference to some of the singing shows he did for different TV Channels. You must be surprised as to why the first part of this series is titled, ' A Legend called Ghantasala'. The idea is to give you a picture about the Telugu film music scene when SPB made his appearance. He recorded his first song for 'Sree Sree Maryadaramanna' in Dec 1966 (according to Wiki). The movie is listed as a 1967 release. So we can say that people heard SPB first in 1967. In 1967, the leading stars of Telugu films were N T Rama Rao (NTR) and Akkineni Nageshwar Rao (ANR). Actor Krishna was making his mark. The popular music directors included K V Mahadevan, S Rajeshwar Rao, Pendyala Nageshwar Rao. Other music directors li...