Music And Movies

In my earlier post on this same subject, I had explored Ragamalikas in film songs mainly taken from the mythological category. ( You can read that post here ) In this post we will explore Ragamalikas that were used in a social setting. Music directors have used ragamalikas in love songs. One way of going about is to equate the various ragas with the seasons. As the seasons change the ragas change. Also in the hands of an imaginative music director, changing ragas can also be used to depict various shades of love. The first ragamalika which was a India wide hit was 'haayi haayiga' from Suvarna Sundari. This song, its Tamil counterpoint and the Hindi version 'kuhu kuhu bole koyaliya' were super hits in their respective languages. Even to this day they are famous and the overall difficulty of the song, its great melody and the multiple ragas make it a favorite in singing competition. If you can negotiate this song without difficulty you must be a great singer. Tu...

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...

Continuing from last post where we saw the Carnatic great M L Vasanthakumari sing a film song, this post will have us listening to the redoubtable Amir Khan singing a film song. I knew that Amir Khan had sung in Baiju Bawra and had written about it in a post long time back. I did not know he has sung in this film called 'Khudito Pashan'.  Wiki says that this is a 1960 movie directed by Tapan Sinha. The music is by the sarod maestro, Ali Akbar Khan. So you have Amir Khan singing for Ali Akbar Khan. A nice combination. This song is based on the raga Bageshree. There is a commercially available recording of Amir Khan singing Bageshree, which is top class. Here, even though the song is only around 3 mins in duration, he paints a lovely picture of Bageshree. A nice tune by Ali Akbar Khan and sung wonderfully by Amir Khan. Pratima Bandopadyay joins for a couple of lines. Enjoy the song: Staying on the same theme, I will put up one more song. This time it is a song of Kishor...

It's December and Music Season time. Ofcourse anyone who knows a bit about Carnatic music knows that season refers to the unorganized music festival held all over Chennai during this month. Once Music Academy starts its programs around the 15th of Dec, the season will be in full swing. It is a different experience being in Chennai during this time but that is not going to be the purpose of this post. I am going to give you a couple of delightful Telugu songs based on Carnatic ragas. While the last couple of posts extolled the virtues of Dakshnimaurthy Swami's tuning of carnatic based ragas, this post will showcase the brilliance of two Telugu composers. Composers those days had a good grounding in classical music and were able to come out with some nice songs which had the classical touch, strong enough for you to feel the raga and light enough for you to enjoy it as a film song. This year the Music Academy gives its 'Sangeetha Kalanidhi' to Sudha Raghunathan. S...

Many of my friends who read the tribute to Dakshinamurthy Swami wrote to saying either that the number of songs included were less or I had missed some important song or the other. It is impossible to list all the great songs that Swami had composed but bowing to my friends demands I am including a few more songs here. My aim here is to highlight the way Swami used Carnatic ragas in his own unique way. We start with a very Carnatic raga, Neelambari, which is generally used in 'laali' songs. It is the raga which is used to put the Lord to sleep and Tyagaraja has composed some lovely songs in this raga including 'lali' songs. That is a separate track. Let us look at how wonderfully Dakshinamurthy Swami construct a film song based on Nilambari ragam. Ofcourse, we cannot say that the song sticks to Neelambari all the time but that is OK as far as I am concerned, since the song is a lovely one. Swami uses the raga  to create a tender song. He avoids the standard app...

"We called other music directors as Master but Dakshinamuthy was always a Swami for us. He knew what we all wanted and gave it us. He has given us so many boons in music. That is why it is apt to call him Swami" Thus spoke Gangai Amaran in a Malayalam singing competition program in which he was a chief guest. He continued,"Everyone in our family: my kids, Yuvan, Bhavadharini, everyone, were sent to him to learn music. Even if they didn't learn music well, we were happy if he tapped them a few times on their head."  When Illayaraja released his magnum opus, 'Tiruvasagam' he insisted that Dakshinamurthy be the chief guest. Illayaraja in his biography writes that even after he became a music director, he went and played guitar for Dakshinamurthy Swami's recording as a sessions musician, which surprised a lot of people. Such was the respect of Illayaraja's family for music director, V.Dakshinamurthy, known popularly in music circles as Dakshinam...

As I was writing the Punnagavarali post, I was very sure that I will have to immediately write about another similar raga, Ahiri. It is not that you cannot distinguish between Punnagavarali and Ahiri. Both have their unique identities but in many other facets, they are very similar to each other. Both Punnagavarali and Ahiri are janya ragas of the mighty Todi. Both are ‘karuna rasa pradhanam’ ragas. Both are supposed to be ragas with limited scope. Both of them are vintage ragas having been with us for ages. Both are very carnatic in nature, in the sense you don’t find them outside of Carnatic music. (S R Janakiraman in one lec-dem says, “Ragas of the type of Ahiri are the pride and glory of Carnatic music”.) Both have been treated in a similar way by the trinity. Both have interesting associations linked to them. If it was the linkage of snakes and magudi to Punnagavarali is interesting, the Ahiri linkage is even more interesting. It is said that if you sing Ahiri, you w...