Music And Movies

I n this part, I will point you to some of MS's iconic neravals, which I am sure you will all enjoy. All the attributes I had mentioned in the earlier parts of this series about MS's neraval are present in each of these. The breath control, vocal consistency across the range, vocal dynamics, creating tension and resolving it, clear enunciation of words, gripping phrasing and above all, the bhathi bava that she injects into each one of these neravals. 1. We start with the most famous of MS's neravals. 'sama gana vinodhini', the charanam of 'Sarojadala Netri,' the Syama Sastry krithi in Shankarabaranam raga. The kriti rendition, featuring neraval and tani, took the roof down during her UN Concert.  (This link starts from the neraval. To hear the whole ragam and krithi, search for Part 1.) Her voice is in great form, and she effortlessly traverses the higher reaches.  The neraval has left such an indelible mark on the psyche of listeners that few artists take o...

  ( 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 ) Starting the beginning of 80s and all the way to the mid 90s, SPB dominated the musical landscape of Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. In case of Malayalam, Yesudas was the immovable legend and as with Hindi, SPB's Malayalam diction wasn't as good as his Tamil or Kannada diction. Even with the three languages, SPB's domination was complete in case of the Telugu film industry. In case of Tamil, though SPB sang the most songs by a male singer during those years, the man dominating Tamil film music was Illayaraja. We had lots of famous films in which SPB's voice did not feature. Others like Yesudas, Malaysia Vasudevan, Jayachandran and later Mano, also featured in Illayaraja's songs prominently. In case of Kannada, Dr.Rajku...