Music And Movies

  ( 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...

  ( 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 ) We have seen the emergence of Illayaraja in an earlier part. By the beginning of 1980s he had established himself as the foremost music director of Tamil film industry. Veterans like MSV were fading and the other music directors of that era like Shankar Ganesh, Chandrabose and others could not match up to the quality that Raja was delivering.  In the 1980s, SPB had also found his style. This was the culmination of more than a decade of singing. SPB was now extremely confident of himself and his style. With the veteran actors slowly fading from both Tamil and Telugu film industry, SPB, who was the voice of the new generation of actors, was in high demand across languages.  In the next couple of posts, we will not have much to discuss about SPB's singin...

  (SPB with Salman Khan) ( 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 ) K. Balachander made 'Maro Charitra' in Telugu and it became a super hit, not only in Andhra Pradesh but also in Madras. The songs of MSV were top class. He had used four female singers in it. Susheela, Janaki, Vani Jayaram and L R Eswari. The lone male singer was SPB. Balachander now wanted to remake this in Hindi. Since MSV was not well known in Hindi, he had to chose a popular Hindi music director. He chose Laxmikant Pyarelal as the music director. Balachander wanted SPB to sing for Kamal in Hindi as well. Balachander had always been a great supporter of SPB. Over and above that since Kamal was playing a role of a Tamil boy who did not know Hindi, he probably felt that SPB would be the apt singer. The only problem was the LP, as Laxmikanth Payarelal were kn...

 (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...

(You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  , Part 7  ) The Telugu film music saw a gradual decline from the 1960s. The 1970s did provide good quality music but there was decline compared to the 1960s. The 1980s was an extremely bad period for Telugu saved by music directors from outside of the state, mainly Illayaraja. Otherwise the main music directors for Telugu films like Chakravarthy, in decline K V Mahadevan, J V Raghavulu et al produced lot of forgettable music. When I look back at the moves from 1981 to 1985, the percentage of movies which had good music is low.  Don't mistake me for that person who always feels 'Old is Gold'. The truth was that Tamil was having its most glorious period as far as film music goes. With Illayaraja at his peak, Tamil film music reached heights which no other film music was able to reach before or since. Malayalam too had good music directors in that er...

(MSV-SPB) You can read the earlier parts here: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6   Raja's coming to the scene happened at the right time. M S Viswanathan who was the dominant music director in Tamil was slowly losing his form. Let me say, his form became uneven in those time. If you look at the list of films that MSV did between 1976 and 1979, you will surprised that you have never heard of many of movies. The songs too were middling and forgettable. The other upcoming music directors at that time were Shankar Ganesh duo and Vijaybhaskar. V. Kumar too scored music for some films. Of these Shankar Ganesh would go on to score for lot of films. Like Chakravarthy in Telugu, they too would churn out tune after eminently forgettable tune. MSV though gave some amazing numbers in this period. What I was talking earlier was the percentage of good songs that he gave, which was getting lower. His combination with Balachander produced some melodies which are popular to t...