Music And Movies

1. MSV : The background 2. MSV : His breakthrough year    3. MSV : The consolidation years    4. MSV : Variety and Versatility    5. MSV : The split     6. MSV : Some aspects of their style  7. MSV : Vishwanathan - Ramamurthy: Their legacy  8. MSV : Birth of MSV  9. MSV : The melodies   10. MSV : The trendsetters  11. MSV : The RD Burman influence  12. MSV: Early 1970s melodies   13. MSV : Review of early 90s TFM   14. MSV : A new competitor   15. MSV : The order changeth slowly 16. MSV : Beyond Tamil films    17. MSV : His legacy

Part 1: Background - A legend called Gantasala  Part 2: Initial years of struggle Part 3: Baby steps in Tamil land   Part 4: Climbing to numero uno spot in Telugu    Part 5: Tryst with classical music     Part 6: SPB & Raja        Part 7: Non-Raja Tamil songs of the late 70s      Part 8:   SPB, Chiranjeevi and early 80s Telugu film music      Part 9: Illayararaja - Vishwanath - SPB         Part 10: Illayaraja - Vamsi - SPB            Part 11: SPB in Hindi films       Part 12: SPB- Raja - Tamil film music 80s - 1       Part 13: SPB- Raja - Tamil film music 80s - 2      Part 14: SPB- Raja - Tamil film music 80s - 3        Part 15: SPB's domination down south    Part 16: Dominance in Kannada        Part 17: Emergence of Rahman and the Cha...

Her is the link to read all parts of this series The 1980s, in my opinion, is when Hindi film music started sliding downwards with respect to quality. The arrival of Amitabh Bachan and the angry young man made the hero the main draw and not the music, unlike the time of Rajesh Khanna, where his romantic image was kept alive by music. Not just this factor, but R D Burman slowly losing his commercial edge, and the emergence of Bappi Lahari and Disco music led to melody taking a back seat. Though there were a lot of 'hit' songs in those times, as they are during any phase, their staying power has been limited.  This was also the time when new female voices started entering the field, and slowly, the need to have Lata in their movies was declining. Lata's voice, too, was undergoing a change, and it was not suited for the disco songs of that era. Asha Bhosle, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, and Anuradha Paudwal got to sing a lot of songs in the decade of 80s. Lata slowly decr...

( 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 ,  Part 17  & Part 18 ) SPB career spanned more than five decades and for the majority of the time, he was the dominant singer in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada. Now wonder he has left behind a lasting legacy. The most important thing SPB taught many singers is that film singing is a different ball game compared to classical music. He was not a classically trained musician but was able to emote so well that his singing style suited the film idiom perfectly. He gave hope to thousands of singers, amateurs and professionals, who may not have been classically trained, that they too can sing if they put in the required effort and tried to build their own musical personality. SPB's singing ca...

( 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  & Part 17 ) In the post 2000s, the number of memorable SPB songs came down. He did keep singing the hero intro song for Rajni, I personally am not a fan of 'balelakka' and other songs of the same nature. It was clear that the new gen, with its constantly changing singers and that unending quest for something 'different', was calling SPB only for select songs. There was no guarantee that these songs were good. Telugu and Kannada probably gave more opportunity to SPB compared to Tamil. The Hindi imports became popular in Telugu and Kannada as well, with Sonu Nigam become a big hit in Kannada.  A couple of songs of SPB that I like from the 2000s are Raja songs. I will give them 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 ,  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...

 (SPB - K Vishwanath) (You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 , Part 8 ) As I said in the last part, the Illayaraja - Vishwanath and Illayaraja - Vamsi combination created some amazing music in Telugu film world in the 1980s. In both cases, the female singers were varied but when it came to the male voice, it was always SPB. Let us first take up the Illayaraja - Vishwanath combination. This combination made a total of four movies together: Sagara Sangamam, Swathi Muthyam, Swarnakamalam and Chinnabayi. The last movie was not well known the first three are considered classics in Telugu cinema. K V Mahadevan was Vishwanath's regular partner when it came to music and he has given amazing music for Vishwanath, be it 'Siri Siri Muvva', 'Saptapadhi', 'Jeevana Jyoti', 'Seethamalakshmi' or that all time hit, 'Sankarabaranam'. So when Vishwanath came to Illayaraja for 'Sagara Sang...