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...

( You can read the earlier parts here:  Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 ,  Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6  ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8  and Part 9 ) K. Vishwanath was a man who made most movies based on classical music and his themes were quite similar. Vamsi, who had worked as an assistant to K Vishwanath, was an eclectic director. His themes varied a lot. He could cover serious movies, comedies, thrillers, classical music based movies and so on. He had a streak of craziness in him which reflected in his movies. Illayaraja seems to have loved this streak in him and he also gave eclectic music for the films of Vamsi. It was almost an unwritten rule by then in the Telugu film world that the male lead singer would always be SPB. 'Sitara', the first film that Raja and Vamsi combined together had some wonderful melodies. It is difficult to pick any single one from this. Let us hear 'kuku kuku'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8TlKkqN_B8 SPB's voice suits t...

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...