Music And Movies

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...

(Sankarabharanam) Links to earlier parts: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 & Part 4  In the year 1980, a film was released which had all the necessary requirements to be a huge disaster at the box office. The hero was an unknown drama actor, a middle aged man. The heroine, an unknown dancer, again playing the role of a middle aged woman. Subject of the film: Carnatic music. The only two well known faces were those of Chandramohan, a middle tier hero and Nirmala, who acted as his mother. Neither of them were box office draws. The music was heavily classical music based, an anathema for Telugu film music of those times. K. Vishwanath, who had directed the film had a tough time releasing it as no distributor wanted to touch such a sure shot disaster. Finally somehow the film was released and the first week proved that whoever had shied away from buying this film were correct. Then a miracle happened. The next week on the film picked up and within no time everyone in Andhra Pradesh wante...

Akkineni Nageswar Rao passed away in the early hours of today succumbing to cancer. He is an actor whose memory will always be cherished by those who have watched his movies. ANR, as he was fondly called, along with N T Rama Rao was one of two super stars from 50 to the 70s. ANR was known for his sensitive portrayals and his tragic roles while N T R was known for his mythological roles in his initial days and for his loud roles in later days. The truth is both were equally at ease be it a comic role, mythological role, tragic role or a standard dancing hero role yet they got slotted into certain roles. Many of the roles Nageswar Rao played had a pan Indian appeal. Ofcourse he acted mostly in Telugu films and venturing once in a while to Tamil. The image of him as a tragic hero was cemented early in his career when he did 'Devadas'. Many believe that it was the best Devadas they have seen on screen. Better than Saigal, Dilip Kumar or Krishna (who remade it again in Tel...

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...

There were two ways to get to my school, St.Mary's, from Secunderabad Railway Station. One was the straightforward way crossing SPG school, taking right at Manohar theatre, crossing St.Francis School and taking left to reach my school. The other was a short cut. Who in his youth can resist a short cut? This was through a very very narrow lane behind SPG school, in the Regimental Bazar area.  The lane had enough width for a couple of scooters to pass each other, or maybe not. The house on both sides had the traditional raised platform and very low roofs. The door size was such that any adult, whatever his height, had to enter respectfully. The houses were a two room affair and each house was joined to its neighbors at the hip. There was no gap between the house and after around 15 to 20 houses, the perpendicular road would provide the break, after which the house again stretched holding each other. There was no space for a compound wall and if an house did not have the platform ou...

It was like a ritual for me. I would take the local train on one of the second Saturdays and get down at Dayanannagar Station, close to which my friend Ranganathan used to live. Ranganathan was my class mate who used to be teased a lot in school due to his girth but once out of school we became thick friends in Junior College. One of main reasons was our love for music. He was one of the few who owned a record player in those days due to his father also being a great music lover. So I used to go all the way to his house in that local train in order to listen to the records which he had. I now don't remember the records I heard at his place except for one, which was part of the ritual that I mentioned. That was the record of 'Kandan Karunai' and the last song that I always listened to before I left his house was 'Solla Solla Inikkudhada'. 'Kandan Karunai' had some lovely songs and it won its music director, K.V.Mahadevan, the National Award for music. The ...

Every epic needs its hero. And that hero needs a trusted lieutenant. (This lieutenant is often referred to as a 'side kick' or a 'second hero' in our films.)In the field of Indian film music one of the most famous trusted lieutenant was Pugazhendi. Pugazhendi, born Velappan Nair, was the most trusted lieutenant of K V Mahadevan. In all the movies where K V Mahadevan has scored the music, you will find the name of 'Pugazhendi' appearing as the assistant music director. His devotion towards 'Mama', as KVM was affectionately known, is legendary in the South Indian film music circles. He remained at Mahadevan's side till Mahadevan's demise and would take care of every need of Mahadevan. This is definitely surprising in the movie industry where the bond is tight onlt till the next hit. Pugazhendi was the person who wrote the notes for the songs, who arranged for the songs of K V Mahadevan. P B Sreenivas, in one of the programs said that as K V ...

As I had promised in my earlier post, we will now talk about a music director of whom it can be said that he crossed all boundaries with utmost ease. Rasayya, aka as Raja, later rechristened as Illayaraja, is a music director who is held in high esteem in all the South Indian languages. Breaking through in Tamil with the refreshing music of 'Annakili', Illayaraja spread his tentacles all over the South and is still giving some amazing melodies in all these languages. In terms of quantity, his output in Kannada was the lowest amongst the four languages. Still, his songs hold a pride of place in the hearts of Kannadigas. A song, 'Nagu Endidhe' by Janaki, was playing one one of the FM Channels as I was driving. I had no clue on the details of this song like the movie, music director etc but I didn't have an iota of doubt about the music director. This wonderful and complex melody had the stamp of Raja written all over it. I went searching for this song without knowin...

It was I in a earlier post who wrote about the difficulty of music crossing boundaries and it is going to be me who will now write about music directors who crossed boundaries rather easily !! While I would still argue that musical barriers are more difficult to break compared to other arts, it must be accepted that only in the case of music is language redundant !! If a Japanese person like the same American movie that you do, it will be very difficult to convey what you liked about the movie if there is no common language. In case both of you liked the same English song, you just need to sing it and communication is immediately established. I have seen this when we went to a karaoke in Tokyo along with our Japanese client and sang 'Hotel California' together. None of those who sang that day had any clue on how to sing a song but that didn't stop us enjoying the song together. In that way, music is a language by itself. In India, film music is most common language in the...

As I was writing the article on Brinda and Mukta, I realized that once I had written a tribute to K V Mahadevan and his contribution to cine music in Sangeetham.com. Unfortunately the site is down and I dont have a copy of what I posted. So I thought I will now write about K V Mahadevan's use of carnatic music in A P Nagarajan films. What I write here would be only related to the use of carnatic music in film songs by K V Mahadevan. In case you want to know more about KVM's contribution to film music as such, you should check out sites like www.tfmpage.com or www.dhool.com There are some very nice articles about KVM in these sites. KVM used lot of carnatic ragas in the films of A P Nagarajan. Let us first take the film 'Tiruvilayadal'. This is a film that not many tamil film buffs would forget. The best section, musically, is the last one involving the singer 'Bana Battar'. This segment involves four songs, of which we can safely discard the philosophical song t...