Music And Movies

  (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...

Long back I had written a few posts on ragamalikas in Carnatic music and promised that I will write about ragamalikas in films soon. So here is the post, though it is not 'soon' now. (My posts on 'Ragamalikas in Carnatic music Part 1 , Part 2 & Part 3 ) There are many situations in which ragamalikas are used in films. Today I will concentrate on ragamalikas in bhakthi films. In essence I am going to speak about two things which have almost disappeared from films. Bhakthi films and ragamalikas. In an earlier era, we have seen a stream of bhakthi and mythological films hit the screens in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh (I think it was the case in Kerala and Karnataka too.) With the changing demographics of the viewers the bhakthi and mythological films lost their allure. In earlier days, film watching was a family exercise. The number of films watched with parents in those days was more than those watched with friends. The mythologies wer...

(Ghantasala) While the classical music purist frown when ragas are mixed, especially down south, we need to accept that sometimes this mixture does produce great music!! The mix happens in two ways. One by the introduction of alien notes. Second by mixing two ragas. Carnatic music is familiar with the introduction of alien notes into a raga, while mixing of two ragas is not looked at favourably. In Hindustani mixing two ragas is quite common.  Basant Bahar and Bageshree Kaanada come to mind. In Hindustani music they call it jod-ragas. The song that we will hear today is one such mixture.  I am not sure if this raga exists in Hindustani music or it was creation of the music director, Pendyala. The raga takes Kaanada in its upward movement and Chakravaham in its descent.  It sounds lovely and this is a very popular song in Telugu. Music, as noted earlier, is by Pendyala, lyrics of Malladi and sung wonderfully by Ghantasala.  This is one song in which yo...