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

(Jesudas & Ravindra Jain) Do you recall any movie in which every song invokes a "All izz well" feeling in you? There are many movies in which every song is a gem but they may not necessarily evoke the 'feel good' factor. I can only think of a few movies which have such songs. One of them is 'Chitchor'.  'Chitchor' was a Rajshri Productions film, the production house started by Tarachand Barjatiya. Their philosophy in the 70s was simple. As in 'keep it simple, silly'. (The acronym would never happen in their movies.) Have a simple, idealistic story, which will appeal to the 'family audience'. Cast newcomers. Keep the budget low. Provide lovely music. In short, they depended on their stories and songs. Not on stars and marketing drives. They were successful for a long time. They left behind some superb melodies which the children of 70s can never forget, for all of them were 'feel good' melodies. They made mo...

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...

(Devarajan) An important aspect for which music is used in films is to create a 'mood'. While most of the time, the mood is an emotional one, sometimes a temporal mood is sought to be created. Our classical music has mapping of ragas to both emotional moods and temporal moods. By temporal mood, I mean the ragas ability to evoke images of a particular time of day. For me, this mapping has been problematic. I believe lot of this mapping is culture specific and in many cases your mapping may not agree with the traditional mapping. For example, no one would have a problem if Subhapanthuvarali is mapped to sadness. But to what mood would you map Kalyani or Thodi? Many say Bhairavi is a raga of sadness but I find it one of joy. S.R.Janakiraman, after singing a Mukhari song asks, "Where is the sadness in this?" He was referring to the oft repeated assertion that Mukhari is only fit for crying!! If emotional mapping can be so problematic, you can be sure the temporal mappi...

(Shyam) Each of us has a gripe about what is missing in film music these days. Lack of melody, lack of good poetry, lack of good voices, lack of natural instruments and much more. While I too miss all of these, one thing which I miss, especially in Hindi and Telugu film songs is the sense of ordinariness in song picturisation. In earlier days, there were lot of songs whose picturisation was nothing but a capture of the ordinary lives led by its protagonists. This would come as a nice relief against the running around the trees and frolicking type of songs. Think about the picturisation of songs in movies of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Gulzar, Basu Chatterjee and others and you will immediately understand what I say. Nowadays this aspect has completely vanished from Hindi and Telugu movies. Every song is lavishly mounted. Even if you have to cry, it will against a backdrop of half a dozen dances wearing colour coordinated skimpy dresses. The music accordingly has become very loud and only h...

(Raveendran Master) One particular aspect which makes me go listen to a composer often is the way he deals with raagas. To me, the more imaginative the music director is in dealing with a raaga, the more new ideas he is able to showcase, the more respect I have for him. In this regard, Raveendran is one music director for whom I have high regard. He was very good in dealing with various raagas in a very original fashion. Raveendran ruled the Malayalam film music in the 80s. He has given songs which will always stay with the Malayalis. Songs like 'Harimuraliravam' and 'Pramadavanam' are all time classics now and some of the movies he worked like 'His Highness Abdullah' and 'Bharatham' had his music as their mainstay. Ravenndran's effort is even more laudable for he was in an industry which was quite adept in dealing with Carnatic ragas. Music directors like Dakshinamurthy Swami, Devarjan Master, M G Radhakrishnan et al have dealt wonderfully with va...

One of the important reasons our movies succeed is because they create an ideal world for the viewers. And in creating this ideal world, music plays a very major role. There have been many songs which talk about an ideal world, a world where everything is in place, good things happen to you and you look forward to living a life filled with happiness. I can probably call this as a separate genre of songs and we have had many such songs in Indian Film Music. "puthiya vaanam puthiya bhoomi", "putham pudhu bhoomi vendum", "suhana safar aur ye mausam hasin", "muthyamantha pasupu", the song I featured earlier, "moodala manaya" and many many more. No wonder these songs become very dear to us because of their message that life is good. If one music director has been called repeatedly to create such an utopian landscape through his music, it has been Ilaiyaraja. There are countless creations of his which do this magic. We will examine some of ...

After post on songs based on Bageshree, I received some good comments, both in the comment section as well as through mail. Everyone had their favourite Bageshree and told me that I missed it in my post. There were some songs that I didn't know and some I had deliberately not put in keeping the length of the post in mind. Now that I have clear proof that people can't get enough of this raga, I will do an additional post now to cover the other songs. Ofcourse, even after this there will be many Bageshrees left behind. Don't blame. Blame the composers, who had a soft corner for this raga. Before we proceed further, I am sure many of the carnatic music aficionados  know that the carnatic raga considered closest to Bageshree is Sriranjani. This is as per the swaras but it is clear that the emotions they invoke are quite different. But don't be surprised if you hear a bit of Sriranjani in Bageshree. It is very much possible and is not a problem in your hearing!!! One son...