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

  ( 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 ...

( 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  and Part 9 ) K. Vishwanath was a man who made most movies based on classical music and his themes were quite similar. Vamsi, who had worked as an assistant to K Vishwanath, was an eclectic director. His themes varied a lot. He could cover serious movies, comedies, thrillers, classical music based movies and so on. He had a streak of craziness in him which reflected in his movies. Illayaraja seems to have loved this streak in him and he also gave eclectic music for the films of Vamsi. It was almost an unwritten rule by then in the Telugu film world that the male lead singer would always be SPB. 'Sitara', the first film that Raja and Vamsi combined together had some wonderful melodies. It is difficult to pick any single one from this. Let us hear 'kuku kuku'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8TlKkqN_B8 SPB's voice suits t...

 (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...

(M.S.Baburaj) A lot of South Indian Film Music directors were influence by Hindustani Music as well as by Hindi Film Music directors. You can find the Hindustani strains in lot of films songs of Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. 'Karnan' (Tamil) is an excellent example of North Indian influence. The hugely popular 'Sivashankari' ('Jagadekaveeruni Katha') is another example. One of the music directors from Malayalam film industry who was very much influenced by Hindustani music and Hindi film music was M.S.Baburaj.  (I realized quite late that I have not written about this excellent music director. I had written about the other greats of Malayalam film music but somehow missed him. As they say, better late than never.) I first came to know about M.S.Baburaj through a piece on Janaki written by Saravanan in dhool.com. In that article Saravanan compared Baburaj-Janaki combination to Madanmohan-Lata combination. When such a comparison is done, it is bu...

Our festivals and music are highly interlinked. One cannot miss the festival music, even if you want to. For, the nearby temple will be blaring out the songs from those tinny loudspeakers. Ganesh Chaturthi is one festival where you get to hear songs in most parts of India. In Hyderabad, along with Ganesh Chaturthi, we have the Mahakali jatra time. The Mahakali festival itself stretches over more than a month. During this time every small Mahakali temple will celebrate and you get to hear songs day in and day out. Especially during the weekend, as the festival will be celebrated on Sundays. Added to these loud speakers, you also have the 'potha raju' and the famous live 'teen maar' of Hyderabad. All I have to do is type, 'dha dhanakur dhan' and the rhythm will immediately start playing in any true Hyderabadi's mind. So embedded is this 'teen maar' in our mind. ( I have not analyzed it but I have a feeling that 'teen maar' probably is equ...