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...

 (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...

(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...

  Link to earlier parts: Part 1 , Part 2 and Part 3 Let us return back to the Telugu film music scene now. As I had mentioned in Part 2, with Ghantasala passing away in Feb 1974, the top slot for the male singer fell vacant. There were two competing singers at that time who had the opportunity to fill this slot. One of V. Ramakrishna and other was SPB. In the initial stages, of the two top heroes, NTR preferred the voice of SPB while Nageshwar Rao was using the voice of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna depended on his voice being very similar to Ghantasala to take him to the top slot. SPB depended on his versatility and his ability to sing like the hero to take him to the top slot. Slowly and steadily, SPB captured the top slot in the Telugu film music industry. SPB's voice fitted easily for the new heroes like Krishna, Shoban Babu, Chandramohan and so on. The problem was with NTR and Nageshwar Rao. This was because NTR and Nageshwar Rao's voices were closely associated with the voice...

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...

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...