So this comes from a recent comment from a reader (as it keeps coming up) that in the 1970s, Tamils were under sway to Hindi film music until the arrival of Ilaiyaraaja brought them back to Tamil music. I have asked many people born in the 1950s and 60s about this — family and others. And as I began to explore non-MSV 60s/70s Tamil music, my doubts grew further.
I don’t doubt where and how this urban myth comes from: we like to deify our deities. So we want them to have performed superhuman acts not just in their field (music, in this case) but in the cultural space of the times. So here are some questions: Was Hindi music popular all over Tamil Nadu before Raja came? Or was it just Chennai?
Like most social/cultural phenomena, the answer is a little complex and involves several variables.
One fact is indisputable. Tamil hits were constantly being made (a ton of songs like V Kumar’s Vaazhvil sowbagiyam vandhadhu, GK Venkatesh’s Then sindhudhey vaanam, which is not including MSV’s hits like Yedho oru nadhiyil or Malligai en mannan mayangum or Malare kurinji malare….) Even I, in my childhood, have heard these songs repeatedly on the radio. (Audio cassettes landed in India only in the late 1970s.)
But there’s another fact, and it’s a bit of a googly: The superstardom of Rajesh Khanna (beginning with Aradhana, which ran for something like a year in Chennai, if not more).
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/how-could-rajesh-khanna-die/article3654681.ece
Senior journalist Sushila Ravindranath said: “At that time, not too many Hindi movies were screened at Chennai’s theatres. We saw Aradhana and he was unlike any other actor we had seen. We knew all his songs by heart, even if we didn’t understand the lyrics. He became an instant heart throb.”
And most of Rajesh Khanna’s films had pretty good music. So people went to see the star and came away humming the songs, which were probably etched in their minds further by Vividh Bharti. So for probably the first time in Chennai (and I still doubt this was an all–Tamil Nadu phenomenon), Hindi music began to rival Tamil music.
Here’s another fact: the counterculture. Yes, it’s true that Bombay embraced hippie-dom more easily than Chennai but cafes in Chennai were playing Beatles music and — above all — RD Burman lobbed a ten-ton bomb into the city with Dum maaro dum. So “cool teens” (who, till then, only had rock ‘n’ roll Ravichandran and Jaishankar film songs) now had an anthem, along with the arrival of Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi on the big screen, happy to pose in bikinis. Never before had a non-Hollywood heroine been seen in anything but a chaste one-piece swimsuit. (MSV’s brilliant one-off nod to the counterculture was Kaettukodi urumi melam, where he used Western beats for the villager played by Sivaji Ganesan and village beats for the foreign-returned Jayalalitha.) So Hindi movie-watching had a spike.
Even so, it wasn’t exactly like a tidal wave of Hindi movie music had washed away Tamil music. A few films every year would be celebrated (say, the Nasir Hussain productions scored by RDB) — because that kind of “hard-core” Western pop/rock music was rare in Tamil music. But our own composers were also giving melodic hits — with new singers like SPB. (Check out Vijayabhaskar’s Anbu megame ingu odi vaa, or Dakshinamurthy’s Nandha en nila.)
So what happens to Hindi music after the tornado named Raja makes a landing? RD Burman’s slow decline and the generally uninspiring quality of 1980s Hindi film music (even though I recall the songs of Ek Duuje Ke Liye were a megahit in Chennai), and above all, the matchless prolificity of Raja — I think all these pushed Hindi music aside.
Even so, the Hindi music-listening population — whether then or now — was/is always a small bunch of multilingual urbanites. The head of Saregama once told me that most people watch movies in their own language (and listen to songs in their own language). I don’t doubt him at all.
Baradwaj Rangan 
vijay
November 17, 2021
This is a question which need to be posed to those who spin such narratives. what metrics do they use? what was playing on vivdh bharati/AIR during the mid-70s in prime time slots? what was interior Tamil nadu listening to?(question applies to mid-90s as well, I suspect the Rahman “wave” didnt penetrate as much beyond Chennai and big cities) and many more..
Otherwise it becomes a lazy generalization(perpetrated by Tamil tabloids), kind of like the other one I heard where some folks go “hindi patta kekkaravangaLa kooda thamizh paattu kekka vechchavar Rahman” and so on..
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vijay
November 17, 2021
“Even so, the Hindi music-listening population — whether then or now — was/is always a small bunch of multilingual urbanites. ”
and they were always listening to HindiFM. Before RDB, it was Lata/Rafi and such..if I can speak for my father’s generation.
Plus, The advent of stereo/TV and disco music brought in Disco Deewane (unforgettable Nazia Hassan) and Qurbani type of pan-India hits in the late 70s/early 80s pat in the middle of the IR wave.
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vijay
November 17, 2021
The thing that differentiates 70s TFM for me from other decades after that is that the ‘second-tier’ MDs were pretty good and in a league of their own -V.Kumar, Vijayabhaskar, Shyam, and the likes. ada ennada polladha vaazhkai by Vijayabhaskar in Thappu thaaLangaL still remains one of the best thalaivar songs with its uncharacteristic almost Jazz-like melody lines and SPB’s nonchalant swag. Some of the current day nincompoop MDs would do worse than to attempt a Jazz remix of this if at all they get to work on a Rajni film.
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shaviswa
November 17, 2021
My uncle left India in the mid seventees – before the advent of Ilaiyaraja.
He still has a letter written to him by his friend around 1978 time period. His friend had written:
“Ilaiyaraja-vum SPB-um Hindi padalgalai Tamizhnattil irunthu viratti vittanar.”
My uncle did not have access to any Tamil film music in the US back then and he got to know about him only through his friends. He listened to Raja’s music much later when cassettes were easily available for him to carry back to the US.
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Madan
November 17, 2021
“RD Burman’s slow decline and the generally uninspiring quality of 1980s Hindi film music (even though I recall the songs of Ek Duuje Ke Liye were a megahit in Chennai), and above all, the matchless prolificity of Raja — I think all these pushed Hindi music aside.” – Totally. The biggest reason people stopped listening to Hindi music in the 80s was simply that too much of it was pure dreck. There is still a lot that’s good but you have to patiently sift through the films to get to it. And the good stuff was ghazal-oriented like Arth/Bazaar, not the R&R of RDB (except Satte Pe Satta). Nobody needed to listen to nonsense like Mere Naseeb Mein when you had Raja reeling out one after other top notch album.
Speaking of ghazals:
“and they were always listening to HindiFM. Before RDB, it was Lata/Rafi and such” – Well, not necessarily, if I speak of my elders. Aradhana was the launching pad for most of them, including my mother. And through that, some of them eventually got into older, 60s stuff. In fact my mother hadn’t heard very much of pre-RD Hindi music at all before marriage and she didn’t initially enjoy being bombarded by Talat-Rafi-Mukesh (my father OTOH grew up in Dhanbad). Aradhana and then the RDB juggernaut did bring in new listeners of Hindi from TN. But the impact was overstated. Everybody likes a good narrative even if it’s not true and the narrative of a Raja-led triumphant Tamizh resistance to the Northern invasion is irresistible. I don’t think Raja himself as a fan of old Hindi music necessarily buys into that narrative but I could be wrong because it would suit his ego to endorse it at the same time.
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shaviswa
November 17, 2021
“The biggest reason people stopped listening to Hindi music in the 80s was simply that too much of it was pure dreck. There is still a lot that’s good but you have to patiently sift through the films to get to it.”
The same is true about the 1970s Tamil film music.
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Jayram
November 17, 2021
“There is still a lot that’s good but you have to patiently sift through the films to get to it.” – that’s what I’m doing nowadays, since I don’t really listen to the new stuff. Such as this: https://youtu.be/VvVTfZnvVc4 and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2InYAC4C2o
After my dad moved to Canada in 1982, he pretty much shut out any Hindi music pre-1980, because according to him, it was “paapishti paatalu” (terrible music in Telugu); he still detests Om Shanti Om to this day. He had received a plethora of cassette tapes from the “Golden Age” of Hindi and Telugu cinema and also Carnatic Music cassettes of MSS and BMK (some of you can figure out where my love for CM and vintage music comes from) and listened to them frequently during his days as a CompSci PhD student at British Columbia and later at the University of Iowa. My mom and her siblings grew up listening to the classics of Lata/Rafi/Asha/Kishore, Ghantasala/Susheela, SDB/Naushad/OPN/MM/RDB, but were more casual listeners. Since my maternal grandmother won singing prizes at AIR when she was a child in the 50s, she would make sure AIR was being heard in the house, especially Bhakti Ranjani and CM recitals, since my mom and her siblings were learning Carnatic vocal music from BMK’s colleague in Hyderabad.
From what my relatives told me, Tamil music never really made an impact in their houses in the 70s. Anything that was a Indian language not Telugu or Hindi sounded foreign to their ears; they always gravitated towards Telugu and Hindi because that’s what they knew/were familiar with. The old guard like KVM and MSV were still there. Also, pop music was starting to make waves in India; my uncles became massive fans of MJ, while my mom started loving ABBA.
I was told when Sagara Sangamam/Sadma released in 1983, Raja finally made his mark in Andhra Pradesh; I don’t know if Seethakoka Chilaka or Amavasya Chandrudu were big hits or he became known because of Sirimalle Puvva in 1978. But it was from that point onwards that Raja was here to stay. Believe it or not, it was my maternal grandmother who got me hooked onto Raja’s music thanks to her singing of O Papa Laali. I finished listening to the soundtrack of Geethanjali in a day and the rest is history.
“Everybody likes a good narrative even if it’s not true and the narrative of a Raja-led triumphant Tamizh resistance to the Northern invasion is irresistible. I don’t think Raja himself as a fan of old Hindi music necessarily buys into that narrative but I could be wrong because it would suit his ego to endorse it at the same time.”- Good point. If not Raja, his rabid fans (not us of course!) will definitely endorse it.
Fun fact I should have shared in the #ASKBR for KB, but am sharing here: my parents knew KB’s son Bala Kailasam while he was studying in Iowa at the same time as my dad.
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YAML92
November 18, 2021
Loving this series.
Couple of more such ideas for Music Notes.
Why do successful music directors over time, start to compose songs/albums which fall out of audience’s favor? They have all have had an undeniable read of the audience’s pulse over multiple generations so why does that suddenly change?
Why do we always have Father time playing the major role – time and again, we have noticed that younger composers always have been able to attract the minds of the audiences. Why is this so? Granted they are closer in age to the younger population whose opinions count the most. But my question is re. why are older composers not able to keep up the trend? Does experience count for nothing against creeping up old-age?
We have seen this with MSV, IR and sadly now in the last 3-4 years, ARR too. We can even think of how/why music directors like Deva, HJ, Yuvan all sound amazing for a period and then suddenly vanish.
Is it time we stop looking for the next single composer who is gonna dictate the industry beyond ARR and consider granting this status to the present young composers of Anirudh-Santhosh-Justin-Ghibran-Sean Roldan etc?
With the changes in how music is being used in movies (multi-composer albums, easier to generate good catchy music now than ever before etc.) I somehow feel ARR is probably the last single composer to dominate the entire industry.
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Prat
November 18, 2021
” I suspect the Rahman “wave” didnt penetrate as much beyond Chennai and big cities” – this is true. I’ve never heard a single Rahman song played in rural buses and it seems like non-urban TN have just shrugged off ARR’s music. The songs I’ve heard in most of these buses are stuck in the 70s and 80s as if bad audio quality and screeching songs are the desirable traits. They probably consider ARR’s music too highbrow or a radical departure from songs of their liking to want to listen to it.
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Macaulay Perapulla
November 18, 2021
Someday, when BR gets utterly bored slapping his thighs and doing review videos, a fascinating oral history of Indian film music book will be born.
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vijay
November 18, 2021
i sometimes wonder would there be such discussions of ‘eras’ and “timelines” in the contect of TFM of the last 10-15 years. would anybody be say hotly contesting ow the Anirudh era pushed Rahman/Yuvan aside (just as an example, I dont really mean this)? I think the discussion of eras and waves itself stops somewhere in late 90s/early 2000s. You feel for the current gen sometimes. They dont have the strong cultural markers/icons that defined the decades upto the 90s..(it maybe known more as the Vijay/Ajith era if anything)
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shaviswa
November 18, 2021
The lafk of penetration of ARR music beyond the cities is evident from how nee directors who come from the hinterland use Raja’s songs (Kalloori for example). Films like 96 rode on Raja’s song popularity.
Even for someone like me who grew up around the time Rahman made his debut, Raja songs are still the most preferred. While I do love ARR for what he did to Tamil film music, the emotional tug is from Raja’s songs and not Rahman.
But I do feel that film music is no longer going to have the same impact as it used to. Directors today do not come up with scripts that demand songs. They do not know how to use a good song in a film. So this form of music is likely to fade away just like it did in Hollywood.
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vijay
November 18, 2021
I think rather than exploring these media-spun selective narratives , it would be worthwhile to actually explore in a musical sense, what MSV was doing in the mid-70s in his songs and how did that differ from his own hits in the mid-60s. For instance, in a lot of songs scored for Sivaji/MGR/KB in the 70s and with singers like KJY/VaniJ emerging his melody lines for those songs became more intricate.
In the early 60s, when the ‘light’ music era was happening a higher proportion of the tunes were easily hummable like say paalirukkum, pazhamirukkum or unnai ondru ketpen or paalum pazhamum and the likes..and maybe thus capturing the young gen’s attention at that time..In the 70s, he started making aval oru navarasa naadagam type melodies more and they had a lot of intricate sangathis and curves inbuilt. But then again I am not sure if this is the right space to delve into these things. Good Music discussion forums have become a rarity these days..amidst all the noise and junk that social media is
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Madan
November 18, 2021
shaviswa : I really don’t think there is a comparison between, on the one hand, songs like Kamban Yemanthan, Bharati Kannama, Vaa Nila Nila, Nila Nazhanangalil and, on the other, Raat Baki, Main Ek Disco, Yaar Bina Chain and that’s before I get to utter kevalams like Ek Do Teen, Jhumma Jhumma or My Name Is Lakhan. The worst you can say about the former set of songs is they are somewhat boring and old fashioned, albeit that’s mainly in comparison to how dazzling Raja’s work would be. But they are not BAD by any stretch of imagination. And there are many, many songs of that standard that MSV composed in the 70s. They weren’t outliers the way Khaiyyam, Jagjit Singh or Jaidev’s work was in the 80s.
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brangan
November 18, 2021
shaviswa: Even for someone like me who grew up around the time Rahman made his debut
Ah.
So given the fact that some of us have actually been around in the 1970s, don’t you think you should be a little more careful while making statements like “all 70s Tamil music was crap”? 🙂
You can say “I don’t like it” — sure. But there were a ton of songs that were both qualitatively, innovatively splendid (even from the likes of Shyam and Vijayabhaskar and V Kumar) as well as audience favourites.
See, those days, people used to write postcards to radio stations to play these songs. And the names of these “neyars” would actually be read out. And let me assure you, no one is going to ask for a bad song to be played. How often a song is played is how you knew how big it was.
PS: But sure, if you — like some Raja fans — are going to say that a song is good only if it has bass-guitar backing and harmonies and counterpoints, then even Madan Mohan or Roshan or SD Burman will all be crap!
PS2: In simple words, Raja kept his tune-making simple and his arrangements complex. MSV kept his tune-making complex and arrangements simple. Which you choose to like is your preference, of course. But as a Rahman-era child, before making sweeping statements I would suggest you delve more into older eras of music — only if you are interested, of course.
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Madan
November 18, 2021
BR: I wouldn’t really call Raja melodies simple per se though some of them are (Madai Thirandhu, Ilamai Itho Itho, Thamarai Kodi, etc). I do get your point. The moment you write a song riffs up, the riffs WILL shape the flow of the melody and that’s why even the melody itself of Raja feels very rhythmic (and is almost always staccato as hell). This seems to shape his thinking even when he is not writing Western like Sangeetha Jadi. The motif is, relatively, simple so that it can set up a groove.
The question is how then does he compose by first singing the melody to the director. It seems very clear that he has already visualised a chord progression for the melody but he doesn’t write it down! How is it that possible?
Anyway, yes, to get back to MSV, because MSV was purely writing melody up, I guess he decided to not be constrained by meter anymore in the 70s. And that’s why his 70s work is rather different from the 60s. My personal preference is for the more TKR era style melodies but I do appreciate MSV’s willingess to change his approach in the 70s.
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sai16vicky
November 18, 2021
Since there is talk about Shyam, any love for ‘Mazhai tharumo end megam’ here? I love that song, mood and the lyrics as well. How can we talk about 70s TFM and not talk about Shankar-Ganesh? ‘Beautiful Kashmir’ from ‘Idhaya Veenai’ is a solid counterpoint to ‘Pudhiya Vaanam’ from ‘Anbe Vaa’.
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
November 18, 2021
“…Even so, the Hindi music-listening population — whether then or now — was/is always a small bunch of multilingual urbanites…” I am not sure … My neighbours in Adyar, where I grew up and who never stepped out of TN or spoke any other Indian language except Tamil- English too not terrific or anything- were mesmerised by RDB SDB S-JK and the earlier gen with Raj Kapoor and Nargis, of course, Vaijayanthimala [ Think Sangam was a big hit] – combo of reasons other than multilingualism and compelling music- the idea of Bollywood as seductive its glamour; several South Indian heroines especially, in top form in the Hindi Film industry, some cross over films- and just maybe the Madras folks love for commercial cinema surmounting the Hindi barrier… overall we loved good music coupled with good entertainment
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Rahini David
November 18, 2021
And it is totally not true that ARR wasn’t popular in rural Tamil Nadu. Movies like ’96 concentrating on Illayaraja music has become a sort of tradion. Using Illayaraja songs as background has been going on for some 15 years. The year that the movie explores is 94 (the tenth standard year of that batch) Kadhalan was probably listened to more than most other albums.
At least in the mid-90s there was nothing too radical about ARR’s music. They were populist enough at least when they were Shankar or Kadhir movies.
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brangan
November 18, 2021
Madan: Maybe we define melodies differently, so let me state what I meant. it’s simply the part of the song that is sung. If I find it easy to sing, I say “simple/simpler melody”. If I have trouble singing it, I say difficult. (This is not about my timbre or tonality. This is just about whether I can hit the notes “correctly”, with sruthi suddham.)
I find very many of Raja’s melodies very simple, easily sing-able (and I am not saying this in a bad way at all)… and I usually mark 85/86 a cut-off point in Raja’s “melody thinking”. Take a song like ‘Azhage azhagu devathai’… The minor notes he infuses at “paavalar ezhudhum” are astonishingly vivid, and they give such colour to the song. Same thing with ‘Aaru adhu aazham ille’ (the end of “aazham”). Or the gamakam-filled ‘Varuvaai anbe’. The song feels like freedom itself.
But post a period, he gets into a fairly frequent metric four-line structure. Oru poongavanam… say. Or, Sundari kannal oru seithi… (Compare Raja’s use of Kalyani in this song to Vaidehi Raman, 1984 I think.) It’s the arrangements (for me at least) that make Sundari, not the melody. Again, I like a LOT of the latter-day Raja songs as well (though not many after the mid-90s, when he changed his style radically). Recently, I liked “Onna nenachu” a lot while I first heard it, and was on loop, but now I don’t return to it that often. These things are hard to say why, and I am not going to even try.
Like you say, it’s easier to make a song “flow” when you are thinking only about the melody and not melody + arrangements. I am just saying the former was MSV’s method, the latter was Raja’s.
Also, MSV had with him the inimitable Kannadasan who kept pushing him. Take Abhi na jao, one of the all-time-great songs with a “simple metric structure”. It’s basically a waltz, but the mukhda seems to be a freaking 1.5-minute-long flow: despite the easy line breaks to catch one’s breath, despite the metric-ness of the beat). Why? Because the lyrics seem to be like one complete sentence. (Don’t leave me now because of all these reasons). Antara 1 and Antara 2, too, seem to be written like one sentence — so the :”flow” of this melody, this song is un-freaking believable.
This is — very loosely — the MSV model, seen in songs like in songs like “Enakkoru kaadhali irukkindral, aval ezhu swarangalil sirikkindraal.” And on a lighter note, in the legendary “Pournami neram paavai oruthi…”
But with Raja, take…
Oru poongavanam
Pudhu manam
Adhil romanjanam
Dhinam dhinam
There’s importance to the ending of the verse sure, but I think his complexities with the arrangements could allow for TOO much of this sort of melody-making. That’s what I mean. In this very same song, change the words and you still have the same “mood”. Nothing changes in this song itself. Because there’s an element of “control” in Raja’s music (inevitably so, otherwise the various intricate pieces will just fall apart) that just doesn’t allow for much melodic improvisation.
Randomly:
Oru kadhal dhinam
Pudhu sugam
Engum neerin niram
Kulir varum.
Likewise, MSV’s melodic sensibilities could never (IMO) make him do the Raja kind of arrangements (even if he went to Trinity school, whatever) because the melodies will fall apart.
This is an endless topic and I will stop here, but with the caveat that whenever you try to talk about music or any art, there are bound to many generalisations and there’ll always be some exceptions.
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brangan
November 18, 2021
Nimmi Rangaswamy: Your point is taken, but you are still talking about people in Adyar — they are metro-ites. Being in Chennai, they had access to Hindi films/music. I can hardly believe that ALL of Tamil Nadu was swaying to RDB or Rajesh Khanna hits, until Raja came and wiped them out 😀
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Prat
November 18, 2021
“But as a Rahman-era child, before making sweeping statements I would suggest you delve more into older eras of music — only if you are interested, of course.”
Are there any playlists you’d recommend?My knowledge of Tamil music stops at 1992, as a Rahman-era child.I want to explore the olden songs, but there are not many definitive recommendations available out there.
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sanjana
November 18, 2021
Many relatively new hindi films released in most of the small centres and small towns allover tamilnadu according to my relatives who lived there in the 50s, 60s, 70s. One theatre in those small centres catered to the sizable non tamil speaking people, muslims, anglo Indians, telugus and to even some college going tamil crowd.. I think, it used to be a trend to enjoy hindi films. It seemed that many did not understand the language but enjoyed the Kashmir scenes, songs and the actors according to my sources who recall those days of Madhumati, Bees saal Baad, Kashmir ki kali, Mera Naam Joker, Sangam, Aradhana etc. Some used to travel to the then Madras to catch up with new hindi movies. According to them, during marriages, hindi songs used to be played more than tamil songs. Of course at that time dravidian parties were just making entries and it was congress which ruled tamilnadu and its politics. Somewhat due to hindi friendly congress party.
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Heisenberg
November 18, 2021
//And it is totally not true that ARR wasn’t popular in rural Tamil Nadu.//
Yup. I come from Madurai – not exactly rural but being there and going around to nearby cities one can get the feel of what was popular. ARR songs were definitely popular – I remember how Kadhal desam, Gentleman, Bombay songs were present almost everywhere.
But like someone else mentioned here, Raja’s songs had that emotional connect with people. A Radio might play rahman song on its own, but neyar viruppam were mostly for Raja songs.
P.S. I don’t know if I have grown old or now the music quality (&lyrics) has really gone so low. Now the purpose of the song seems to be to become viral on youtube and make the movie popular. Adding salt to this irritation is these songs come with behind scenes/making video. Ennamo periya kaviyam padaichita madhiri and giving us a peek into that process.
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Rahini David
November 18, 2021
Prat: There is no definitive list in atleast in Youtube similar to this one.
But try going for a Kannadasan list or go by actor name or actress name in Youtube “Tamil Cinema” channel.
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Madan
November 18, 2021
BR: There are probably more songs with melodic twists or difficulty in Raja’s later years than early on, really. He wouldn’t have done a song like Ithazhil Kadhai Ezhudhum in his early phase. Or Kadhal Kavithaigal for that matter. And you will find that this late 80s-early 90s focus on enriching melody coincides with his harmony getting either boring or more symphonic (rather than independent /contrapuntal).
Regardless, I get your point and since you mentioned Abhi Na Jao, without giving away too much, in my book I have given examples of SD’s long, loooong mukdas that still somehow have a flow. I know Abhi Na Jao is not SD but it’s from that family of melodies.
I also agree with your theory of why it is the way it is with Raja. If he wrote MSV like long, flowing melodies, he would lose control of the arrangements. So he actually breaks up the melody into neat divisions so that he can devise complex arrangements for each such division.
If you take Mella Thirandhadhu Kadhavu, the melody that sounds most like MSV is Ooru Janam. And I bet there wouldn’t be a space between Ooru Janam and Thoongirichu if MSV had done the arrangements (with an arranger, in his case). In fact he once sang the Ooru Janam motif in a DD interview where he discussed the film and I recollect him singing it in flow. Even as a diehard Raja fan, I would say I find his insistent staccato a tad suffocating and that’s why one should get out and listen to other stuff once in a while too. I have been marvelling over the flow of Tere Liye Palkon Ki Chaalar lately. It’s nothing compared to an SD masterpiece but it still has so much flow compared to a Raja melody. Raja practically doesn’t let the singers sing two words continuously unless they form couplets like Sayndhu Sayndhu. Even between words there is a neat mathematical separation. But… music is not always mathematical, ra!
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vijay
November 18, 2021
IR did strike a balance in some of his early 80s classics like Kaatril endhan geetham, where the tune need’nt be simplified and the interludes/orchestartion was at another level. The ending lines of the stanzas for that song is not easy to sing at all (but of course SJ breezes through).We have discussed nadhiyoram before from annai oru aalayam. Ennullil engo from Rosapoo ravikkaikaari is another ghazalish tune with memorable ludes. Manadhil enna ninaivugaLo, theerthakaraidhanile shenbaga from Thaipongal and so on. The latter song is a wonderful pathos number. Otherwise, pathos is a difficult mood where our MDs sometimes slip, go into preset patterns with some forceful singing and it ends up being more annoying than evoking any pathos(Mani osai kettu yezhundhu used to irk me a lot). MSV was no exception in that department either in that he did’nt strike gold all the time.
Prat, just start youtubing. The thing is, with the current 20-somethings they have the world of music a click away. I cant help but remember how I searched for days and weeks for uravugaL thodarkathi in 1998 online and managed to find only a scratchy realaudio file(This was the pre-MPR era format).
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vijay
November 18, 2021
one of my IR favorites from late 80s for a change is Poongatru un per solla from Vetri Vizha. The way the stanza tune is constructed, with just a hint of melancholy(minor notes) and then after Chitra goes”raajavin muththam koLLUM” it again returns back to the joyful mode. And ends with a brief whistle postlude. At the end of the day it is a fast-paced song with a pulsating rhythm pattern but still the gamut of emotions it traverses thru is quite something..
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Madan
November 18, 2021
I found it. Here it is:
He doesn’t sing Ooru Janam in flow but he does improvise the timing of Paavi Manam in a way that isn’t there in the original take.
Also he sings it gently without accents. Raja is all about accents and he imposes it all over Ooru Janam also. So it becomes :
Ooru JANAM
THOONGirichu
Oodha Kaathu Adichiduchchu
Paavi MANAM
It isn’t that dramatic as it looks like when I capitalise it but there is always an accent. Like I said earlier, his melodies are inherently rhythmic and if you gave him someone else’s melody too, he would still do that anyway.
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Yajiv
November 18, 2021
This is a really interesting post. I’m a bit younger than most of you here (closer to shaviswa’s age, I’d say) but I was raised to believe that Raja had ‘vanquished’ (exact word that my aunt used) Hindi music dominance from TN airwaves. Fascinating to see how untrue that was/could have been. Have forwarded this to my extended family. Expecting some heated discussions 🙂
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Prat
November 18, 2021
Thanks for the suggestions, Rajini and Vijay.
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Shalini
November 18, 2021
“Take Abhi na jao, one of the all-time-great songs with a “simple metric structure”. It’s basically a waltz, but the mukhda seems to be a freaking 1.5-minute-long flow: despite the easy line breaks to catch one’s breath, despite the metric-ness of the beat)”
Eh? Methinks you haven’t listened to “abhi na jao chhod kar” recently because the mukhda lasts a mere 25 seconds not 1.5 minutes. Your observation is correct with regard to the antaras though and they are indeed minute plus long sentences.
Something like “yeh wohi geet hai jisko maine”, also by Jaidev or “madbhari yeh hawaayen” (Salil C.) or even “aao aao jaan-e-jahan” (RDB) might illustrate your point better?
“…should be a little more careful while making statements like “all 70s Tamil music was crap”?”
Hear hear. Now write a defense of 80s HFM. Seriously.
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shaviswa
November 18, 2021
@madan
I know you are from Bombay but even then, the spelling janam for sanam is a bit rankling 😀
@BR
I will not say I do not like MSV. I like MSV from the 1950s and 60s a lot. I like songs from the 1950s by AM Rajah, Adi Narayana Rao and many others. So it is not about the style of music.
I find the MSV songs from the 1970s (but for some exceptions which everyone is able to mention here), very hard to listen to. The songs do not strike a chord at all. Whereas he did a wonderful job during the MSV-TKR era and even a few years after their break up.
To sum up, I am not stuck in a 90s time wrap. 🙂
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vijay
November 18, 2021
BR, as part of this series you should chat with Ananthu the singer and erstwhile MSV composing assistant for many years. He is quite accessible and chatty but usually gets asked the same set of questions. Let us know if you do it and I can write up a few questions here or mail it. And later on 2 more guys-Karthik Raja and Ramesh Vinayagam, knowledgable, know their history and can shed more light on many songs with their unique perspectives. Pianist Anil srinivasan is another. It could be a series of music related chats even sponsored by Filmcompanionsouth and not just for this blog
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Anand Raghavan
November 19, 2021
Love these discussions, thanks everyone. Typical Raja song filled with staccato lines and unbelievable arrangements is Vaazha vaikkum kaadhalukku Je…another song similar was Nethu oruthara oruthar paarthom.
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Bala
November 19, 2021
I am a bit young for this discussion, but, I would suspect Doordarshan’s chitrahaar and oliyum oliyum to have had an impact on the effects discussed here?
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vidyakar
November 19, 2021
This song always sends me into a rapture. It has a fairly free flowing melody line AND intricate orchestration. Can somebody knowledgeable comment on whether this song has any musical merit or it is just that my ear and brain are wired weird :)?
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Ravi
November 19, 2021
BR, Looks like postcard is still the mode for “Neyar Viruppam” in Vividh Bharati, And if you tune into 102.3 FM between 6 and 7 pm, you will find that there are still takers for 60’s and 70’s music. To me, 70’s music brings back fond memories of listening to Ilankai Vanoli. Often, the songs of a movie would be played much before the movie was released in TN. I came to know of the songs of Ninaithale Inikkum, varuaiyin niram sivappu, Imayam etc. much before they were broadcast on AIR.
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Ravi
November 19, 2021
Vijay, Yes 60’s vs 70’s of MSV would be a good topic to explore. In contrast to Madan, I like the late 60’s/70’s of MSV better possibly because of a brighter and more cheerful sound!!
I feel that “Aval oru navarasa nadagam” is more in the 60’s mode. Possibly, “Nilavu oru pennagi” from the same movie is more representative of the 70’s MSV. He deviated sometimes from the simple metres of early 60’s even before the advent of KJY/VJ in songs such as “Kangal irandum vidi vilakkaga” (Kannan en Kadhalan), Ponnukkenna Azhagu (En Magan), Thotta Idam ellam (esp. the Susheela portions) and Ondrum Ariyada (Idaya Kani).
I happened to listen to an interview of Prabhu where he reminisced about the composing of “Sumai Thaangi Saaynthaal” from Thanga Padakkam. More than a decade earlier, MSV (with TKR) had composed “Paalum Pazhamum kaigalil yenthi” for an almost identical situation. I wonder if the two compositions reveal anything about the change in style of MSV over time!
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Madan
November 19, 2021
shaviswa: That might be because Sanam is a Hindi/Urdu word with a completely different meaning and I would hear it completely different from the Tamil one (which IS essentially a derivative of jananga etc).
vidyakar: I think the Azhagiya Nadiyenna melody is more rhythmically than melodically intricate. Lots of words and syllables to be rendered continuously (like the “kodiyenna melindhatu idaiyenna therindhadhu kodiyai neengi malargal aada” in Hey You Come from Anand). But the notes themselves are repetitive (in keeping with the beat) and don’t require the singer to traverse very much across the scale. That in comparison to the Aaaa sangidhi in Idhazhil Kathai Ezhuthum because if you don’t nail every note in that sangidhi, you’re gonna trip hard. The Sangeetha Megam charanam is also tough because it’s fast and still requires you to keep going up and down. I mean, you can kind of get most everything to land on pitch but if it doesn’t have the sheer ease and smoothness of SPB’s rendition, it’s going to sound forced. The Thenodai Oramae phrase in Raja Raja Cholan charanam is another one where the careful with that axe eugene warning applies.
Speaking of Azhagiya Nadiyenna arrangements, most of it is very standard late 80s Raja. But I like the Ra-pa-pa chorus from 2:42, it does a bit of a harmonic excursion. Tho, last I checked there isn’t any real modal interchange going on there. Fun fact here: Raja, Embar Kannan and others in his troupe analyzed Anandha Ragam second interlude for that ‘modulation’ and it turns out there was no scale/mode change at all there. OTOH Perai Sollava second interlude involves a nice little change that people wouldn’t really notice.
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vijay
November 19, 2021
Prat and others, if you are overwhelmed with all these sugestions and dont know where to begin, I’ll make specific recomendations on a few MSV soundtracks to check out, which are quite versatile and cover a range of genres:
Pudhiya paravai
Kudiyirundha Kovil
Kalaikovil
Karnan (for te Hindustani/carnatic styles)
Aayirathil Oruvan
Sivandha Mann
The above is just a start, the tip of the iceberg and you can eaisly find it in youtube or other playlists. Once you jump in, it’s an ocean that can keep you immersed forever. Or I could be wrong and you could come away unimpressed. Anyways, atleast definitely worth a dive.
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vijay
November 19, 2021
Singer and former composing assistant of MSV, Ananthu’s song analysis series
https://www.youtube.com/c/MusicTheUniverse/videos
Once again this is just a trailer IMO. There are many more such analyses these days on youtube
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sanjana
November 19, 2021
I am a big fan of A M Rajah and his wife Jikki songs. I am listening to all his songs from telugu and tamil films courtesy youtube and other channels .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._M._Rajah
There are too many songs which are so good and I cant choose a mere one or two from such a vast collection of his songs. I think that he sang mostly for Gemini ganesan and ANR.
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vijay
November 19, 2021
“Recently, I liked “Onna nenachu” a lot while I first heard it, and was on loop, but now I don’t return to it that often. These things are hard to say why, and I am not going to even try.”
I was actually surprised at that time that you felt all gung-ho about that song. If you see the first 2 lines for this song they are almost the same except for the slight change in the last word of the second line to resolve it(kind of like a question-and-response). This is an age-old pattern that you subconsciously get tired of. The stanza ending was very typical as well. Not saying this by itself is a deal-breaker for me but these sort of things often add up, based on your sensibilities.
Take oruthi oruvanai from Saaradha which follows a unique Q&A format for entire pallavi. One long question by the female singer PS and just a one word answer by PBS..
F: Oruththi oruvanai ninaithu vittal andha uravukku peyar enna….?
M: Kaadhall..ll……..llllll
and then 3 more sets of questions and answers like this in the pallavi alone. If this were lyrics first song(which knowing KVM is most likely the case) it would have been intimidating for any MD as to how he is going to set this exam Q&A type of lyrics to tune. But he comes up trumps. He ends Kaadhall..in a slightly higher note so that the female singer can take off from there for the next question and so on and on..until it finally resolves with “mounam” at the very end and dives back to ground level. KVM had many such winners in the 60s..
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vijay
November 19, 2021
AM Raja was a pretty good composer-singer. I rate him slightly better as a composer though, kind of in Hemant Kumar’s mould. While Hemant composed the stunner “kuch dil ne kaha” in Anupama AMR besides others, AMR’s highlight was probably Thenilavu songs. He had a very brief run though. Could’nt survive the industry. His life itself ended tragically later.
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vijay
November 19, 2021
But coming back to this thread’s topic, was’nt Tezaab and QSQT big hits in the late 80s in South? Songs like ‘ek do theen’ ‘so gaya eh jahaan’, ‘papa kehte hain’ etc. playing all around in cassette shops. Even Aashiqui and Saajan had their run just before Rahman’s advent. So these further nullify the myth propagated by select sections of the media.
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shaviswa
November 19, 2021
@Vijay
Yes. Oruthi oruvanai song is such a wonderfully composed song and amazing lyrics too. Just love that song and never get tired of listening to it.
Even the saranam has wonderful poetic lines:
மறைக்க முயன்றேன் முடியவில்லை உன்னை
மறக்க முயன்றேன் நடக்கவில்லை
நினைக்கும் நிலையிலும் நான் இல்லை
உன்னை நெருங்கும் தகுதியும் எனக்கில்லை
Similarly,
கேட்டேன் கேட்டது கிடைக்கவில்லை
என்னை கேலி செய்தாய் மனம் பொறுக்கவில்லை
வாதம் செய்வது என் கடமை அதில்
வழியைக் காண்பது உன் திறமை
Interestingly, the hero is a lawyer. So the line also describes his profession while at the same time making a statement to the girl that she has to find a way to convince him.
கண்டேன் கண்டது நல்ல வழி
அது காதலன் உடனே செல்லும் வழி
சொன்னேன் பல முறை யாசிக்கிறாய்
நீ சொன்னதை நானும் யோசிக்கிறேன்
Such simple but amazingly written lyrics, wonderful tune by KVM and P Suseela and PBS make it even more endearing.
Thanks for reminding me about this song.
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RaviC
November 19, 2021
@BR, that urban myth is true to certain extent. The popularity of hindi songs / movies were high in TN otherwise why would Rajesh Khanna visit Madurai for Aaradhana for its 100th day celebrations and Raj Kapoor to Trichy for Bobby? That kind of things never happened after that though QSQT and Hero enjoyed fair amount of success in Chennai.
About MSV’s numbers in the 70’s, the ones we fondly recall were mostly from the high-profile personalities – MGR, Sivaji, KB etc. Even with Sivaji, who didn’t pay particular attention to songs like MGR did, it was hit & miss. Anbai Thedi, Lorry Driver Rajakannu etc for every Rajapart Rangadurai, Thangapadhakkam etc. Even for Rajni, a somewhat decent Billa was followed by an insipid Thee.
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sanjana
November 20, 2021
Not only Then Nilavu. Kalyana Parisu too. Both have Gemini ganesan.
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brangan
November 20, 2021
RaviC: Lorry Driver Rajakannu was in the Raja era and had a massive hit song in “Vetkappadavo”.
But this is not about MSV. This is about the whole bunch of 70s composers who kept givings songs that people liked, songs that were hits. All I am saying is that the STAPLE FOOD was still Tamil music, despite the Hindi songs that were definitely there. (Read my post again; I am not denying the Hindi song wave at all.)
To give a comparison: Even post Raja’s reign, there were massive non-Raja chart-toppers like “Rendu kannam sandhana kinnam” and a whole bunch of Chandrabose / Shankar-Ganesh hits almost and every single T Rajendar album for a while. But the STAPLE FOOD of the 80s was still Raja.
Hope that’s clearer.
The arrival of SPB and Yesudas in the earlier decade gave a fresh lease of life to composers (even though TMS was still around with his weakening voice) — and they made great use of these singers. Here — for instance — is a massive V Kumar hit from 1975. There are many such songs on YouTube.
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
The assertion that MSV and other TFM MDs in the 70s did not live up to listeners’ expectations, which then resulted in people switching their allegiances to HFM songs is dreadfully off-the-mark. There were no mass conversions. Never happened. Seemaan might not have been around to whip up frenzy, but “Tamizh” was the reigning sentiment. That there were select demographics or niche groups which had takers for HFM songs (or movies), cannot be extrapolated to the larger populace of TFM listeners. The hits of MSV alone (from the 70s) are enough to debunk the notion, but as already mentioned, adding the hits of KVM, GKV, Vijayabhaskar, V.Kumar, Shankar Ganesh, and Shyam blows up that narrative. Mind you, through most of the 70s, MGR still loomed large. Which meant, “MGR songs” loomed larger (while MGR & Latha were scorching the screens). KJY was popular. SPB was rising. TMS was still around and steady. PS/SJ/VJ were all good. Of course, with Raja’s arrival as MD, opportunities for MSV started dwindling. Raja, undoubtedly, expanded the listening pleasure of TFM fans even in the 70s. But there was no dearth of non-Raja TFM hits in the 70s (before or after Raja’s arrival). Below I list a few 70s MSV “hits” for:
MGR
pachchai kili muththu charam mullai kodi yaaro
malare, kurinji malare, thalaivan sooda, nee malarndhaai
kanavugale aayiram kanavugale
azhagiya thamizh magal ival, iru vizhigalil ezhudhiya madal
pongum kadalOsai (2); thanneerile thaalaatave konjum thamizhOsai
thangathil mugam eduthu sandhanathil udal eduthu, mangai endru
Sivaji
vasanthathil Or naal, manavarai Oram, vaidehi kaathirundhaalO
yamunaa nadhi inge, raadhaiyin mugam inge, kannan pOvadhenge
senthamizh paadum, sandhana kaatru, therinil vandhadhu kanne
andamaanai paarungal azhaghu ilam paavai ennOdu uravu
ninaivaale silai seidhu unakkaaga vaithen thirukOvile Odivaa (big time goof-up, as KJY pronounced it therukOvile)
KB
kadavul amaithu vaiththa medai, inaikkum kalyaana maalai
ezhu swarangalukkul ethanai paadal
kaatrukenna veli, kadalukkenna moodi
vaan nilaa, nilaa alla, un vaalibam nilaa
vasantha kaala nadhigalile vairamani neer alaigal
Overall, TFM hits of the 70s were many. There was enough enchantment for the multitudes who tuned in. That an individual or a few individuals or a few music critics might like this song over that or songs of this decade over that from the same MD is not at issue. Those are personal choices based on what matters or appeals to individuals (may even be backed by analysis). Personal choices don’t always align with popular choices and there is little evidence to suggest significant numbers in TN tuned out TFM in the 70s until Raja rode to their rescue.
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
Here is an early 70s hit of MSV (a PS solo from Kaasedhaan Kadavuladaa)
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
This was a ginormous MSV hit for Sivaji (a lovely TMS-PS duet; the movie was a dud)
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
Another 70s MSV hit for Sivaji from Vaira Nenjam (a TMS-PS duet):
And a KVM hit for MGR from Pallandu Vaazhga (yes, MGR had already “katchi thaavified” to KJY; a KJY-Vaani duet):
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Madan
November 20, 2021
BR: Have people really not heard songs like Unnidam Mayangugiren? Wow. Even I have heard it a bunch of times.
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
The “patti-thottis” in the 70s were not playing “mere sapnon ki raani” or “roop tera mastaana”, but songs such as these (a Shankar Ganesh chart buster; btw, Bond versus Rajesh Khanna is no fair fight 😉 granted, this movie was a few years later)
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
Unchecked, I might go on (and empty my 70s playlist :-)), but will wrap up with SPB’s mesmerizing voice for “Mayor Meenaatchi”. MSV was the MD.
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Ravi
November 20, 2021
Lorry Driver Rajakannu also had “Ennenbatho Yenanbatho”, a simple melody with pleasing chorus interludes. As regards Anbai Thedi, two songs: “Chitthira Mandapathil” and “Budhi ketta ponnu” find repeated airing in the listener’s request program on Mega TV and are also quite popular in other older songs broadcasts.
True, there were hits and misses with more hits than misses in the first half of 70’s and the reverse being true in the latter half.
LD Rajakannu was released in 1981. By then MSV had been in the field for more than 25 years (though for 10 of them he had the benefit of collaboration with TKR).
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Ravi
November 20, 2021
ThouShaltNot:, you have given a good sample of MSV hits. A correction: Malare Kurinji Malare is from a Shivaji movie (Dr. Shiva).
KB made 15 movies with MSV in the 70’s out of which Kaviya Thalaivi, Sollathaan Ninaikkiren, Aval Oru Thodarkathai, Apporva Ragangal, Manmatha Leelai, Moondru Mudicchu, Avargal, N. Inikkum, N. Nijamagirathu and Noolveli were all great albums. Naan avan Illai had two great songs: manthara malare and Radha Kaadal varaada. Of course Pattina Pravesam had the hugely popular Van Nila. But I also like Dharmathin kannai katti sung by MSV.
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vijay
November 20, 2021
..and this, a MSV/PS delight, a song for which IR is supposed to have played the combo organ as one of the instrumentalists. He is on record marvelling at the speed at which the song was arranged by MSV. This created an impression in him, that later on when his mentor Dhanraj master pooh pooh’ed film music as such, IR came to its defence citing the craft he saw these MDs display.
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Ravi
November 20, 2021
Vijay: Avalukkendru oru manam had many great songs apart from malar edhu and which are popular even today: Unnidatthil ennai kodutthen, Mangayaril maharani, AAyiram ninaivu, aayiram kanavu. But this one by LR Easwari is a rare one:
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Shankar
November 20, 2021
I agree with a lot of the analysis that BR has been making about the composing and thinking style of both composers, and it is true…they innately think differently and that’s not a problem, as long as one doesn’t get into one is better than the other. And of course, one can hand pick pointed examples to make any viewpoint, though a much deeper analysis (comparing songs from the same stage of career, lyricists involved etc.) would be needed to make definitive thoughts. However, it is still a fun discussion.
One example of a song I love from the latter years of Raja (after BR’s cut-off point, which I don’t agree with for several reasons) is:
I love the flow of the song, and the emphasis on the melody though the arrangement is great as well. Swarnalatha just delivers a knock-out here as well!
The other thing to remember is that Raja has always held yesteryear composers (Hindi and Tamil) in the highest regard, often recounting stories about them, and how he learnt from them. So this myth is more media (and fans) driven…let’s not blame the poor guy for this!
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ThouShaltNot
November 20, 2021
@Ravi: After having pointed KJY’s gaffe, I was afraid that Muphry’s law might kick in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law), particularly since I was posting an overlong comment 🙂 And parked the “Dr. Siva” song in the wrong section. Thanks for the correction.
Oh, I forgot LRE (“Mandhaara Malare” was with Jayachandran for MSV) while mentioning the other notables of the decade. Be it KB or others, the songs that were reasonable hits or even personal favorites were numerous from the 70s. Here is another sweet melody from MSV ( “viswanathan annan eppavume ready” 🙂 ) I’ve always found SPB’s English accent affected and at least mildly amusing. For that matter, most in TFM 😉
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Anand Raghavan
November 21, 2021
Arrival of Raja and Rahman took Tamil Film music (TFM) in opposite paths. Raja arrived when there were MSV and other composers like V Kumar, VijayaBhaskar, Shankar Ganesh, GKV we’re sharing TFM space and in a few years made it almost only him for a decade plus 2-3 years.
Rahman arrived on TFM scene that was only Raja and in a few years it again had other composers like Deva, Vidyasagar, SA Rajkumar sharing space.
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ThouShaltNot
November 21, 2021
As a composer in the TFM space, V.Kumar gave his share of hits, but remained unheralded in the mainstream. The rumored falling-out with KB during the filming of “Velli Vizhaa” did not help his career arc. As for “Velli Vizhaa”, V. Kumar flipped the conventional MSV formula. Musically speaking, you tend to associate “mellow” and “delicate” with PS and “blunt” and “boisterous” with Eswari. Here, PS was turned into a petulant kid (naan saththam pOttu thaan paaduven!) while Eswari turned soul-whisperer. Eswari’s “kaadhOdu dhaan naan paaduven” would rank among the biggest hits of her career (although, her stratospheric popularity came in the heels of “vaaraai en thOzhi vaaraayO”, as it became a marriage anthem in the TN hinterlands). Here are the 2 songs from “Velli Vizhaa”
PS throwing tantrums 🙂
Eswari offering the soothing touch 🙂
(the clip has a misattribution – vaali was the lyricist)
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Madan
November 21, 2021
Anand Raghavan: I don’t completely agree with that formulation because in both periods, the bulk of the assignments was indeed cornered by MSV and Raja respectively. They were the clear leaders in volume. Rahman was never a volume leader and raised the worth of each new project so that even his 4-5 films a year each would be much talked about.
The difference was simply that, to put it bluntly, Chandrabose or SA Rajkumar were pretty mediocre and resorted to imitating Raja (Shankar Ganesh did so as well, most notably on Idhaya Thamarai which ran well in spite of slavishly imitating the Mouna Raagam formula in many ways). While KVM, Vijayabhaskar, V Kumar were at least good if not great composers (I would certainly regard KVM as great and most on this thread would as well). They could not keep up with MSV’s run rate but they had their own distinct styles and their music could stand on its own without being wedded to the MSV epoch. Notice how SA Rajkumar began imitating Deva and Sirpi in the 90s when that sound became popular. So he basically either never had a vision of his own or was too timid to showcase it in his work and relied on imitating the market leaders.
It’s not that there were no other composers in the 80s. It’s just the work of most of them except Raja is forgettable. L Vaidyanathan on his occasional film forays easily eclipsed the likes of SAR or Chandrabose.
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brangan
November 21, 2021
Madan: When I said “flowing” tunes, I did not necessarily mean Carnatic. Yes, “Idhazhil kadhai ezhuthum” is a tough one to sing, but “Nee pournami / endrum en nenjile” is even tougher. (KJY is magnificent.)
I am talking about the “flow” of light tunes, like the “Manamedai” song I posted. It’s not Carnatic based. It just meanders like a calm river, as opposed to Raja’s short repeating phrases. (Again, I am a generalising.”
To get that sense of flow In Raja (even with repeated phrases),recall “Uravenum pudhiya vaanil”. There is one repeated phrase after that: “Parandhadhae idhaya mogam”.
But the rest of the lines just flow: “Odum alai yena manam pogum”
Until we get to three repeated words with papapapa interspersed.
With MSV, “Odum alai yena manam pogum” would just go and on shifting scales or whatever, without the need for a “return to base camp”. Again, it’s just a style thing — not that one is better or worse. But “return to base camp” is a must for Raja usually, because of his approach.
See the difference if you take the song below. The note at the which the pallavi ends (“sol sol sol” is higher than the note of the start of the pallavi. The second line is lower, the third line is the bridge that climbs and the fourth line crescendoes with “sol sol sol”. If all… “flows”.
Shankar: That is not my cut-off point 🙂 I like quite a few songs after that, but I was not in love with his sound
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Madan
November 21, 2021
BR: With the example of Idhazhil Kadhai, I wasn’t comparing or equating it with MSV. Rather, my point was that compared to Raja’s own standards, his melody lines got longer or started to have more flow in the late 80s-90s. This is because he started moving away from his previous independent bassline-Bach counterpoint formula. Let’s move out of Carnatic type songs. If you take a song like Innum Ennai Enna Saiya from Singaravelan, it’s a pretty long melody line and even in the charanam, “Poovodu thaan sera ilankaatru poraadum bodhu” is tricky to sing in rhythm because it runs over two bars (which is rare in his music). Another example from that period is Vanna Kuyile Kuyil Tharum from Priyanka, another long melody line (compare that to Yaaru Veetil Roja, the latter is much simpler). Agaya Vennilaave is another, a classic Darbari (and over polyrhythms to boot!). The Hindustani tinged Naan Enbadhu from Soorasamharam (as compared to Neelakuyile Solaikuyile from the same film which is typical short, staccato Raja melody). There’s Kaviyum Padava Thendrale from Idhayathai Thirudathe.
I have made this case before but in fact it was in late 80s that Raja raised his melody game. The problem with that being it made him start to sound more and more like other composers. It was always his harmony game that was unbeatable but the more he got immersed in melody, the less interesting his harmony writing was. Hand in hand, he started writing more symphonic songs and diluted the groove. Even if it was there, the groove was not the point of interest anymore. As Stevie Wonder said, just because a record’s got a groove don’t make it in the groove. Granted, there’s only so much funk-rock fusion with Tamil music you can do and Raja did a lot more of funk than Stevie Wonder, which is already saying something. But the transition from the Nooravathu Naal sound to the Dhalapathi sound took a lot of bite out of his music and made him more like his Hindi predecessors – this transition was complete with Yenthal Nenjil Neengadha sung rather tiredly by KJ and SJ!
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vijay
November 21, 2021
Apart from the tune/melody, the other aspect I missed in the later 80s years(86-90) was the mood-setting orchestral preludes of the early 80s, like in kaadhalenum kovil or uravenum pudhiya vaanil or vaanengum thanga meengaL or en vaazhvile varum or Poongatru or Poongathave etc. Poongathavae’s prelude is a mini song in itself. All these songs had an eclectic combination of live instruments and unique synth sounds that Raja conjured up during this time. Just listening to the prelude alone gives a hint of the mood of the moment, the time of the day when the song could be set , the visual imagery that it evoked, the abstractness of it all.. The number of such songs proportionally went down as the years went by. Even in Punnagai mannan, these aspects were relatively less. Neither enna saththam indha neram or yedhedho , 2 soft songs that had scope for mood-setting preludes, had an elaborate evocative prelude. Same with keladi kanmani paadagan or nilaave vaa or naan enbadhu nee allavo or kodiyile malligapoo or raaj raaja chozhan or mayanginen solla thayanginen. These are all fine songs nevertheless, but have functional or okayish preludes at best(with the singer sometimes humming a variant of the pallavi line itself forming the major portion of the prelude, or an instrument doing the same liike in raaja raaja chozhan) or no preludes at all, especially when compared to songs from similar situations from the early phase. I am taking into consideration only popular hits here to keep the comparison level. The exceptions, if only few, were there like Devanin kovil’s opening vocal harmony in the prelude or the short, but fine flute piece of poove semboove etc.
But the preludes of the early years were something else, mini-movements themselves, that had their own beginning, middle and end.
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Anand Raghavan
November 21, 2021
Just for Fun compared dominations more or less overlapping in that period
Ilayaraja 1976-93
West Indies cricket team 1976-1991
Women Tennis 1975-1996 (Chris Evert , Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles)
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Honest Raj
November 21, 2021
There used to be a time when I simply hated some films solely because of the Shankar-Ganesh factor. 🙂 I thought the duo was the S. A. Rajkumar of those days. Naturally, I began to develop an aversion towards films such as Moondru Mugam and Oorkaavalan, all the while observing the fact that the duo had teamed up pretty much with all big stars except Kamal (I thought Kamal must be really great for having shunned them). Around the same time, I had chanced upon “Maria My Darling” – the film was being aired on Raj TV on a Sunday afternoon. I liked the song and the tune sounded very MSVesque to me back then. It took a few more years for me to find out who the actual composer was. And to top it off, Kamal had even recorded a song in the film!
Posting the Kannada version as it sounds better – SPB is really captivating here:
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ThouShaltNot
November 21, 2021
For AMR lovers, there is “muththaarame un oodal ennavO” (AMR-LRE) from “Ranga Raatinam”
V. Kumar had a couple of other hits in the 70s (those not already mentioned) that I’m aware of:
sapthaswaram punnagaiiyil kanden (movie: nadagame ulagam)
naal nalla naal, unn idhazhil ezhudhum iniya kavidhai, then sindhum naal (movie: panakkara penn)
Then there is the lesser known beauty (SPB-Swarna) from Nangooram (in collaboration with a Srilankan MD): “oru paarvai paarkum bOdhu, uyir paadum nooru paattu”
Here is a TMS-VJ song for V. Kumar (TMS staying true to type and VJ providing able support) from the unreleased “Manoranjitham”:
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Madan
November 21, 2021
” These are all fine songs nevertheless, but have functional or okayish preludes at best(with the singer sometimes humming a variant of the pallavi line itself forming the major portion of the prelude” – Well but that way, maybe his most elaborate prelude, Sundari Kannal, was composed in ’91. Even the one for Rakkamma is really great for a song of that genre and was gleefully appropriated by others too whenever they did music for Rajni films. Oru Poongavanam, Ninnu Kori, Thoongadha Vizhigal, Paadu Nilave, Sangeetha Megam, Pani Vizhum Iravu, Innum Enna Ennai Seiya, Nee Paathi Naan Paathi, Vaazhavaikkum are some of the other popular songs from ’85 and onwards I could think of off the top of my head where the prelude is thoughtful and not merely the singer or an instrument layer performing what will be the motif of the pallavi.
And on the flipside, you have songs like Poongathave, Neethane Endhan Ponvasantham, Pani Vizhum Malarvanam, Ninaivo Oru Paravai, Endhan Kangal Ezhu Ulagangal, Azhagu Ayiram, Germaniyin Senthen Malare, Hae Orayiram from his early years where he does use that technique of leaning on the pallavi itself to construct the prelude. I think with Raja it becomes more about what songs we remember more from his pre and post 85 phases.
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brangan
November 22, 2021
Madan: I think with Raja it becomes more about what songs we remember more from his pre and post 85 phases.
You are right about this. Also because I (and probably Vijay) belong to what I call the ECHO days — when the records used to be released by ECHO, and they had really good engineers — maybe that’s the “Raja sound” we are drawn to. So as the sound becomes harsher and harsher, the music, too, changes in perception.
Vijay mentioned “Poongatru un paer solla”. I love the song. I hate the harshness of the synth beat. I always wish this romantic number had been backed by drums or something (using the same rhthm pattern). Like in “Vaan megam poo poovai….” How lovely the percussion in the latter song sounds.
In short, “natural instruments with touches of synth” Raja is my go-to phase. For me, that period — say 79 to say, 85/86 — was when he was at his godliest, funkiest, most experimental.
From then on to around mid-95, he becomes a different Raja for me. I get that “softness” occasionally, but even the tabla sounds become more metallic, if you know what I mean. So it’s not that there are no “great songs” from this period. ‘O paapa laali (sung by SPB) is a masterpiece for me; as is “Vaegam vaegam pogum pogum” with its ear-popping rock arrangements, some of the AGNI songs, the APOORVA album, ‘Main haseen tu jawan’, which will be in my top-10 list of Raja’s ‘staccato songs’ (Raja’s phrasing and moulding of Asha’s voice rivals the RDB-Asha songs, and that is no mean compliment)…
But they become rarer (IMO). The ratio of ‘songs I LOVE’ to ‘songs I merely LIKE’ to ‘songs I don’t care for’ becomes bigger.
I guess this feeling is added (for me) by the flavourless voices he chose (Mano, Arunmozhi, post-their-prime Lata and Sushila, and somewhat Asha)…
PS: I got what you meant with that Idhazhil kadhai ezhudhum comment. Thanks.
PS: As much as I love Rahman’s ‘democratisation’ of voices is a good thing in theory, I see why early Raja kept using SPB-KJY-Sushila-Janaki, or why the Hindi composers stuck to Lata-Asha-Kishore-Rafi.
Singing/emoting for film is a unique thing, and it needs more than just the fact that you can hold a note.
Many singers today, I am unable to distinguish their voices, though I am a card-carrying Arijit fan! 😀
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Madan
November 22, 2021
BR: Oh, I completely agree about the sound. I don’t even think it was what the engineers did but Raja himself increasing the component of synth/drum machine sounds. Compare the texture of an En Anbe Anbe to a Vaa Veliye, latter is full drum machine. It worked brilliantly on some albums, especially on Agni Natchatram, but not at all times. I totally get not liking that new sound if you started out with the more ‘organic’ late 70s/early 80s. I was just making a point that prelude writing was still good in the later phase. The problem began from around 89 when he began to move away from the vintage sound. He probably sowed the seeds even earlier with Paramal Partha Nenjam (I hate that ja -jam-jam, can immediately imagine a big gumbal of extras around the hero and heroine). He still did vintage type albums frequently like Appu Raja, Keladi Kanmani, even MMKR but as against that, albums like Pandian, Bramma, Walter Vetrivel had the new sound. I forget the words to the SJ rendered dance song in Walter Vetrivel, anyway the mix on that one is just yuck.
And yes, with Raja’s music, ‘no democracy’ was a good thing. SPB, SJ, PS, Chitra and KJ knew how to do justice to his songs. It’s not anything different from what Hindi chaps did for three decades. That is, it is not something especially inhuman or whatever that Raja did, contrary to what Rahmanites may believe. It was industry practice. When Rahman opened up the arena for a thousand voices, it was very exciting at that time. But now, yes, there is a lack of character in the vocals. As you said, it’s not enough to sing the notes well. One has to tell the story of the song. If the lyrics are good, bring out their meaning and if they suck, imagine Kannadasan wrote them anyway. This is what SPB did for so long. I get the complaints that today no time is given to either composers or singers to etch out the best take but SPB mentioned recording a song within an hour in a single take for Raja once. And how come Shreya Ghoshal is still recognizable by her voice and her phrasing even when she sings in Telugu or Malayalam, let alone Hindi? So it can still be done but most singers today either don’t have a vision of what they want to convey through the song or are forced to sing in a stereotypical ‘modern’ way by composers.
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vijay
November 22, 2021
“But they become rarer (IMO). The ratio of ‘songs I LOVE’ to ‘songs I merely LIKE’ to ‘songs I don’t care for’ becomes bigger.”
That’sthe thing. Exceptions will always be there. The point is a higher proportion of hits had moody, expressionistic preludes in the early 80s classics phase. Those definitely came down in between 86-90. Most exceptions in this phase are from the few Mani rathnam or KB films. If you remove these, nothing much is left. Maybe one out of every 10-15 songs or so. And plus if you add in the weak male singers who got introduced(Mano and arunmozhi started becoming dominant), the forgettable lyrics, etc. this 86-90 phase becomes even weaker. Those add to the listening impact as well.
The late 80s also had the tiresome tabla patterns every third song. One can make a list of 100-200 songs that had pretty much 2 or 3 patterns repeating over and over.
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vijay
November 22, 2021
and BR, unlike you, where I may slightly differ, is I have a higher tolerance for new sounds provided the other components of a song are strong enough to hold my interest. So post-1985 will be split slightly as the weak 86-90 phase and a better 90-94 phase for me. Better in the sense, despite the problem with sounds, a lot of terrific folk melodies were composed in this phase and IR was also good in a few songs where the symphonic sound what you speak of was there, as it was still new at that time. The freshness aspect is important, after all this is mainstream music. In the latter 80s, a lot more aspects of the songs were predictable. I recall going through his discography in 1987 long time back and coming away with not a single standout soundtrack that i can put in my shelves along side a nenjathai killadhe or panneer pushpangaL or nizhalgaL. There were definitely a few good songs scattered across several films though. That year had Nayagan,which musically doesnt rank high in the IR-Manirathnam combinations for me. KB’s film was manadhil urudhi vendum which again had a couple of good light classical numbers. The rest of it was a mixed bag, a good song here or a good song there. 1988-again Mani rathnam’s Agni.
IR fans really have to thank Mani and KB for pushing him in this phase towards trying something new. Otherwise this would have been a barren phase. You would be hardpressed to find films like Poonthalir, or eera vizhi kaaviyangaL or kaNN sivandhaal mann sivakkum and the likes,where despite the movies/director being totally obscure the songs end up being bonafide classics.
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vijay
November 22, 2021
Often, a good gauge of how a MD did in certain phases or eras is to look at what he did for the second-tier or third-tier films that came his way, those that did not have any actors/directors worth a damn or werent even big budget productions. There were many such films elevated by the soundtrack between 1978-1983, the golden phase. Even his first 10-15 films in 76/77 didnt have a director worth a damn. Nobody probably remembers Devaraj-Mohan the directors who did a lot of his initial films. The music is what is memorable. Probably because the approach was fresher, probably because he was strill trying to prove a point and looked at every film that came his way as a potential testing ground to experiment his ideas, or whatever was it. I think the attitude also comes into play. I guess he was more accomodative during this phase or had a more collaborative approach being a newcomer relatively. And plus Kannadhaasan was around for a while and Vairamuthu was also a fresh newcomer brimming with ideas and they could occasionally challenge him. SPB/SJ/KJY were also fresher(even though SPB remained fresh for a looong time), so were the new wave directors like BR, Mahendran, BaluM and so on. You add it all up and its not a mystery as to why those years stand on a different pedestal. It is not just about a prelude here or about a sound there, its the whole thing coming together.
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Anand Raghavan
November 22, 2021
Reading the comments, BRs comment in his AskBR on Rahman arrive at the right time and place makes more sense. Raja’s sound and orchestration started sounding less exciting, repetitive and people (at least cities) lapped up Rahman sound. Hypothetically had Mani introduced Rahman around 1988, would he have had as much success as he did in 1992?
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Madan
November 22, 2021
“Most exceptions in this phase are from the few Mani rathnam or KB films. ” – Actually, out of 9 example songs I listed, 5 were non Mani and I didn’t list any KB song. Other than Punnagai Mannan, all the films IR worked on with KB were heavily classical and did not offer the usual scope to write a Western arrangement. I would also add that IR had only done one Tamil film each with Mani and KB pre-86. So your ‘exceptions’ list would include Mouna Ragam, Nayagan, Agni, Punnagai Mannan, Unnal Mudiyum Thambi along with Manadhil Urudhi Vendum, Pagal Nilavu and Idhayathai Thirudadhe also being at least very good albums if not quite as great as the former group. That’s a rather hefty exception list because it is some of the best music he has done in his entire career.
” I recall going through his discography in 1987 long time back and coming away with not a single standout soundtrack that i can put in my shelves along side a nenjathai killadhe or panneer pushpangaL or nizhalgaL.” – Then I can only say that your standard of standout soundtrack is unrealistic because even if we assume for argument’s sake that 79-84 was peak IR, there would be not more than two -three albums you could put alongside those three. I am struggling to get beyond Ninaivellam Nithya. I MIGHT add Salangai Oli but again it is a classical oriented album. If a standout album OTOH is an album with at least two great songs, there are definitely many albums from 1987 that qualify – Velaikaaran, Enga Ooru Paatukaaran, Anand, Poovizhi Vasalile, Rettai Vaal Kuruvi. It’s the leanest of his 80s years possibly because he was taken up with the two non film albums but that’s still a list of albums plenty of other composers would give carte blanche to be able to have in their CV.
” post-1985 will be split slightly as the weak 86-90 phase and a better 90-94 phase for me.” – And this is a complete headscratcher. Are Paandi Naatu Thangam/Chinna Thambi/En Rasavin Manasule/Aranmanai Killi really that much better (if at all) than Amman Koil Kizhakaale/Kadalora Kavithaigal/Enga Ooru Paatukaran/Karagatakaaran/Kizhakku Vaasal? I just don’t see how. And if you cancel out those albums, you’re left with Dhalapati, MMKR, Marupadium, Arangetra Velai, Veera against Mouna Ragam, Punnagai Mannan, Nayagan, Agni, Appu Raja, Idhayathai Thirudadhe and more. I don’t even have to list all the ‘second tier’ albums of 86-90 because even that group of albums is already so strong.
“SPB/SJ/KJY were also fresher(even though SPB remained fresh for a looong time)” – Yes, but against that, you had to put up with too many Jency interventions ruining beautiful songs like En Vaanile or Deiviga Raagam. Even Vaani while no doubt a technically accomplished singer could be irritating on some songs. At least the arrival of Chitra made Raja completely stop use Jency post-85 and only very few songs for Vaani (I can’t even remember any apart from Kavithai Kelungal). And you still had SPB/SJ/KJ all in peak form in 86-89. Don’t try to make it out like their sottha takes like Yendhan Nenjil or Konjam Sangeetham had already started in that period.
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Madan
November 22, 2021
” Hypothetically had Mani introduced Rahman around 1988, would he have had as much success as he did in 1992?” – That would involve Mani changing composer in the same year as Agni, which itself would completely defy BO logic. And then, he would probably not make Roja in ’88 because while Kashmir was boiling, it wouldn’t get national attention until the exodus of ’90. That is when daily headlines began to mention militant attacks and so, Mani made a very topical film (as he also did with Bombay). So…let’s say he hands over Idhayathai Thirudadhe to Rahman. That was such a drab, boring, un-Mani film it would not excite Rahman nor offer the possibilities for crossing over into Hindi that Roja did. It would be less of an event and Rahman would have to wait. Maybe Kathir would have gone with Rahman instead for Idhayam. Or maybe he wouldn’t. At that time, directors still craved a Raja soundtrack to boost their debut and even if they didn’t, producers would force them to. I understand that Kathir wasn’t particularly keen on working with Raja for Idhayam but he had to if he wanted to get the film made. Vasanth too started off with Raja – Keladi Kanmani.
Agni was the peakest of peak Raja. Somehow, he ended up making an album that even HE couldn’t top. It was his Thriller – every track a surefire hit and a possible candidate for best track in many of his other albums. An album so good it makes even Vaa Vaa Anbe Anbe, as brilliant as it is, feel a tad ordinary compared to the others as it’s the only one that conforms to his usual templates. Neither did Mani or others give him such an irreverent and unabashedly glamorous canvas again, nor did he find the same vein of inspiration again.
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Shankar
November 23, 2021
BR, hope you can share a few thoughts on Enulle Enulle (song I posted), in the context of this discussion….curious to hear your thought. (Sorry, I’m traveling, will post a longer comment later).
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Kannaa
November 23, 2021
Shedding “ThouShaltNot” for the human-sounding hypocorism “Kannaa” …
Coming to songs, SPB never ceases to amaze. Just when you think you’ve gushed enough and have run out of superlatives, there is always that other song and that other song…ad infinitum. Here is a gem from Thani Maram for Shankar Ganesh (“naan kettadhu adhu onne onnu, ava thandhadhu, ada noothil onnu” !!)
The overdone “Thangai sentiment” in Tamizh movies sounds more sincere (and heartfelt) as it finds refuge in SPB’s voice (movie: Raja Rajeshwari. MD: Shankar Ganeshi)
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Kannaa
November 23, 2021
Here are a couple more SG songs from the late 70s.
VJ’s “Inikkum Ilamai” for SG is a sweet rendition that evokes the eponymous movie name …
No hint of the title “Kaneer Pookal” in SJ’s singing here (conveys the opposite mood, perhaps keeping with context). Btw, SJ singing for Shankar Ganesh is a rarity.
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Filistine
November 23, 2021
Talking of voices, Mano never ceases to amaze. In the sense as to why IR used him so much. He was a poor man’s SPB in a manner of speaking, but IR gave him so many songs (he has apparently sung about 25000 songs) that I wonder what he was trying to prove. Listening to some of his songs now is a bit of a cringe fest – Idhayathai thirudathe, Chinna Thambi, Pandian…
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Kannaa
November 24, 2021
SG had a string of musical hits in the 70s – “Aatukkaara Alamelu” (paruththi edukkayile), “Neeyaa” (even after discounting the tune they copied from Laxmikant-Pyarelal), “Pattikaattu Raja”, “Thangaththile Vairam”, “Kanni Paruvaththile”, “Panam Pen Paasam” and more.
Here is one of their superhits from “Thangaththile Vairam” (some of the stuff that KJY-SPB get away with mouthing, ippO, indha oorla sonnaa, izhuthuttu pOi “sensitivity training”-la ukkaara vechchiruvaanga :-))
Unlike SG who had many patrons within the film industry (Ganesh was married to producer G.N. Velumani’s daughter; the duo were in the orbit of powerful men like Devar, Kannadasan, MGR etc.), V Kumar pretty much traveled with KB from “NeerKumizhi” and when that association hit a snag, opportunities started drying up for him. Those who knew Kumar from up-close have said that he was simply unsuited for the dog-eat-dog world of Kollywood (talent though, was never at question). Here is another SPB hit for V.Kumar from “Ezhaikkum Kaalam Varum”
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vijay
November 24, 2021
Mano was the dominant singer of the late 80s, besides Arunmozhi and IR himself. And to think that Nayagan, idhayathai thirudaathe, , soorasamhaaram etc. all didnt have a single SPB song in them, the travesty of it. At least he was left out of Dalapathi.. If it is any consolation, you can head to telugu versions of some of these songs like I do where sometimes SPB is the singer..
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Kannaa
November 24, 2021
The rent-a-lover antics of Jayachitra go awry and hilarity ensues. “Give the man an inch and he will take a mile” rues Jayachitra – nadikka chonnaal, pidikkalaamaa…raagam pOdhaadhO, thaalam edharkku ? Bond is all confused as the drama ends. And scared out of his wits too ! SPB & VJ do the honors in this song for Vijayabhaskar that is filled with frolic.
Another SPB-PS gem for Vijayabhaskar from “Aval oru Adhisayam”
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Kannaa
November 25, 2021
Shyam (a.k.a. Samuel Joseph) was another composer who shone in the 70s. He was not in the same league as the biggies when it came to hits, but I find his songs irresistible. “Devadhai” was a 1979 movie with Jayanthi playing Sujatha (as in, travails galore). “Galeer Galeer” probably got the most air-time of all songs from that movie. Caught in a web of excruciating hardship and unrelenting misfortune, Jayanthi dares to dream (if only briefly) of a blissful conjugal life that most people take for granted. With a mix of melancholy and yearning, SJ’s voice captures Jayanthi’s hardscrabbled life splendidly. Among Shyam’s songs, my favorite though is “maanthalire, mayakkam enna, unnai poonthendral theendiyadhO ” from Devadhai (SJ). All the youtube clips of the song have poor audio quality spoiling the listening experience.
Someone already mentioned “mazhai tharumO en megam” from “Manidharil iththanai nirangalaa” (1978). I think it is the most well-known of Shyam’s songs from the 70s, but I will resist the temptation to upload yet another 70s SPB song here (btw, with an itsy humming role, Shailaja made her debut in TFM). There is another song from the movie “ponne boomi adi” with a couple of Tamizh Superstars – Sridevi and Manorama. Kannadasan, who was unwell at that time, was roped in to pen the lines. Having penned “aarOdum mannil engum neerOdum” for “Pazhani” more than a decade back, writing a song with somewhat similar contours was a breeze for the bard (here, he draws comparisons between the fates of soil and women). SJ, VJ and chorus strike a chord.
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brangan
November 25, 2021
Kannaa: Again, ‘galeer galeer’ – a massive hit song, though I am not a big fan
And yes, ‘maanthalire, mayakkam enna’…
Thanks so much for these diligent trips down the 70s.
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vijay
November 25, 2021
when talking of Vijayabhaskar dont forget anbu meghame ingu odi vaa. Some other non-IR favourites from this phase:
devi vandha neram by shankar-ganesh for SPB/VJ from Vandichakram – an all time favourite, with different tunes for different stanzas
vaazhvil sowbhaiyam vandhadhu SPB/PS Vkumar
paduthaal purandaal urakkamillai by MSV/SPB – miss this SPB the most
there are many more from this phase..
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Kannaa
November 25, 2021
Having arrived with a bang in 1976, Raja cranked hit after musical hit and was the most successful and sought-after composer in the second half of the 70s – Anna Kili, Kavi Kuyil, 16 Vayadhinile, Bhadrakaali, Uravaadum Nenjam, Achchaani, Chittu Kuruvi, Sigappu Rojaakkal, Kalyana Raman and tons more. Picking one of his gazillion hit songs from this period is not easy. My choice of a hit song here though is unorthodox. I pick his 2 songs from Bhadrakaali. The saddest thing about Bhadrakaali was not that the movie and the story made you dizzy, but that a talented lady lost her life in a plane crash (along with her mother and sister). Also, the movie had not yet been wrapped and a double was hired to see it through. The Tamizh audience never got to see Rani Chandra in full bloom because of her truncated life (if you watch the two songs keenly, you may get a glimpse of her potential).
Getting back to the movie, but for the two blockbuster songs from Raja, Bhadrakaali was a forgettable film. “kettele ange, adha paathelaa inge” was a kuththu song which took an unorthodox twist and landed in the house of a madisaar maami. It’s business as usual in
this maami’s household. Yet again, maamaa complains about existence being humdrum and taunts maami for not having done enough to spice it up. Maami then reads maamaa the riot act, “Don’t ever say that I’m not up to snuff. Ever !” Actually, she hands maamaa a large plate and a rolling pin hinting “Have at it !!” (no chapaathis today, btw). Maami then stuns everyone in T.N. dancing like there is no tomorrow (Cruise must have taken copious notes 😉 ). Many real life maamaas and maamis in TN were thrilled to bits that they could be imagined going bonkers 😉 Vicarious pleasure has its pluses.
“kannan oru kai kuzhandhai”, an “adult lullaby” (KJY-PS), might rank among the top TFM songs in Mohanam (another Raja song from Achchani, “thaalaattu, pillai undu, thaalaattu” might share the honors). Watch as the mini-drama unfolds – a favorite
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shaviswa
November 25, 2021
@Kannaa
I remember the “Galeer galeer” song – have heard that on one of my dad’s cassettes. I thought it sounded like Shankar – Ganesh. Never knew about Shyam.
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KayKay
November 25, 2021
@Kannaa…thanks for a great trip down memory lane! Hearing these early Raja gems, I’m reminded anew how many great songs went in service of the thoroughly mediocre Mr “Jilu Jilu Gulu Gulu” himself, Siva Kumar. Annakili, Bhadrakali, Chittukuruvi, Kavikkuyil, Rosapoo Ravikaikari etc. Not to emotion this Raja masterpiece in Hamsadhwani, which Jilu Jilu Gulu Gulu managed to transform into something pervy. (Do catch comedian Alex’s deconstruction of this song on YT which comes with a warning NOT to watch the picturization!)
And I love this early Raja number as well, years before realizing it was picturized on…you guessed it!
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Ravi
November 25, 2021
Kannaa, Shyam did bring variety to the music scene in the 70’s, early 80’s. Va Intha pakkam had two very nice songs: Ival Devathai and Ananda Ragam.
Vijay: “Paduthal Purandal” was probably banned by AIR but was a huge hit in Radio Ceylon. “Medayil aadidum” from Vandikkaran Magan was quite popular here.
In the late 70’s, the movies MSV scored music for became increasingly obscure and so did many of the songs. Your mention of “Paduthal” reminded me of some songs from late 70’s of MSV-SPB which though not quite popular were nevertheless enjoyable:
The last one from “Mahalakshmi” is wrongly attributed to Sathyam for music. That is actually a Telugu movie with the same name.
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KayKay
November 25, 2021
Madan as always enjoy your deep dives into music, and I’ll only challenge you on one point, and consider it a light challenge as I still largely agree with you:-)
Agni Natchathiram is in your opinion, Raja’s “Thriller” with every song a certified hit. My choice of Raja’s “Thriller” would be Ninaivellam Nithya.
Controversial choice I know!
Agni is a great album no doubt and I do love it. It’s also largely a mellow album, duet and ballad heavy with 2 (light) foot tappers; Raja Rajathi Rajan Indha Raja and Rojapoo. Thoongatha Vizhigal and Ninnukori are still gorgeous semi-classical numbers (how audacious, in the latter case to actually start your pallavi with “Ninnukori Ee Varnam” and then to have that line literally be tuned to the opening pallavi of the actual Ninnukori varnam!) while the more sedate Oru Poongavanam and Va Va Anbe is still highly listenable.
And Agni simply had too much going for it. In addition to being a hit soundtrack, it was in service to a hit movie directed by a scorching hot Mani coming off Nayagan and both Prabhu and Karthik at their Box Office Peak.
But as an album, NN is Raja operating at a different level altogether!
It has 2 tribal infused foot stompers, Tholin Mele and Kanni Ponnu complemented by 3 sizzling ballads. Rojavai Thalattum Thendral and Neethane En Ponvasantham are just amazing with awesome musical arrangement by Raja. And of course the all time scorcher in any decade, Pani Vizhum Malar Vanam. I lack the musical vocabulary to describe how amazing I find Raja’s instrumentation in this album, but it’s just freaking awesome! The fusing of violins and electric guitars still rock my world almost 4 decades later. It’s like the Man practically anticipated the rock-laced carnatic fusion that’s become quite a thing these days with bands like Thaikkudam Bridge and Agam leading the charge.
Of course, all that awesomeness had to go to a super flop that marked both the entrance and exit of a Gemini Ganesan daughter from the cine field!
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Jayram
November 25, 2021
My favorite from the early Raja oeuvre:
Reethigowla is its ravishing best. The bass is simply awesome and complements BMK when he returns to the pallavi line. The longing in BMK’s voice puts the listener into trance during “Kanngal solgindra kavithai Ilam vayathil ethanai kodi” and “Nenjil ullaadum raagam Idhu thaana Kanmani raadha”.
17 years later, the same pallavi line tune was refashioned for the BGM of Amaidhi Padai when Sathyaraj sees the flower decoration on the floor:
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brangan
November 25, 2021
KayKay: NN is hardly a controversial choice. And thanks for bringing up the awesome ‘Kanni ponnu’.
For the early Ilaiyaraja thread, my choice for best album would be CHITTUKURUVI.
Adada Maamara Kiliye
En Kanmani
Kaaveri Kara Orathula
Onna Nambi Nethiyile
Each song’s so unique, so different… And superb lyrics, too.
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Madan
November 25, 2021
KayKay: I love NN too so it could be as good a candidate, nearly, as Agni. Agni/Mouna Raagam/NN is pretty much my top three.
I think why I say nearly and differ with you in still elevating Agni is I don’t think of Oru Poongavanam as sedate but rather as a gorgeous, stylish, incredible composition. If you had asked me 10-15 years back, I would have still been on a Ninnu Kori/Thoongatha Vizhigal trip. But today I would go all the way to say Oru Poongavanam is my favourite from the album and one of my favourites overall of Raja. It’s a big slap in the face of the criticize-for-the-sake-of-it detractors as the song does not have ‘clutter’ anywhere. The notes are so economically chosen, there is so much breathing space and YET the song exudes style all the way. And in spite of its tempo, it has so much momentum because of the way Raja takes it through dynamic shifts, all expertly rendered as always by Janaki amma. But it isn’t just the vocal lines. I love how in the first interlude, he brings the strings almost to a dead stop at the crescendo and just as you are left gasping, they elegantly descend down and lead to the charanam. These are things he usually does not do but this album is strikingly thoughtful while still sounding as spontaneous and free flowing as we expect his music to be.
One more thing that made me appreciate Oru Poongavanam and its kind of subtle, ‘hidden’ difficulty:
Notice how in both versions, the violinists/keyboard player struggle a little with the pitch in that first interlude section. And again when they have to play the interjection as the singer sings Naan Kaalai Nera Thamarai. That’s because he’s not using his usual baroque harmony which is more or less just playing counterpoints over the melody. It’s more like a jazz sense of harmony and our musicians, the ones who play film songs that is, are not so accustomed to it and it doesn’t feel as intuitive to them.
I see the two albums this way – NN is a still young and exuberant Raja rocking out unabashed. AN is a mature but still flamboyant and confident composer at the absolute peak of his powers. AN is an album that you can’t pin down like, oh look this is the usual Raja Fender Rhodes, usual Strat guitar parts, usual violin. He avoids many of the typical patterns associated with his music of that period and yet from the first few notes of every song, there is no mistaking them for the work of anyone else.
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Kannaa
November 26, 2021
@BR: Thanks so much for these diligent trips down the 70s.
No problem, BR (had time to indulge this week and have enjoyed both posting and reading comments on this thread; a welcome detour from workaday monotony)
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Kannaa
November 26, 2021
@Filistine: IR gave him so many songs (he has apparently sung about 25000 songs) that I wonder what he was trying to prove
Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of Mano, but you have to give points to anyone who can create an illusion (or come close enough) 🙂 Kidding aside, I suggest that you search for “R V Udhayakumar” in youtube and pick the clip titled “Ennevendru solvatamma” (solvadhammaa) , which captures an on-stage exchange between SPB & RVU. Dead-enders like RVU, who put their foot down about whom they want, may not be the norm. Pragmatic reasons (like deadlines) may dictate whether or not to embrace the “SPB or bust” approach, assuming, in the first place, a case has been made for SPB. Unlike music lovers, many of whom are staunch loyalists (self included), MDs, directors and producers may settle for what works best in a situation (trade-off). There were times I believe, when it was SPB himself who had recommended Mano, because SPB was unavailable. BTW, I’m not suggesting that, that’s all there is to Mano’s acclaim.
Also, the number 25000 seems incredible (rounding error? decimal point miss aagudhu 🙂 “ba ba black sheep”, “twinkle twinkle little star” & assorted nursery rhymes ellaam kootikitaara ?; or maybe there afterall is a justifiable rationale for such a big number)
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Madan
November 26, 2021
Kanaa : Mano reportedly got his start because he had sung track on a song meant to be recorded by SPB and SPB heard his singing on the track and said this is already good. Mano also mentioned on Super Singer that Idhayathai Thirudathe landed in his lap because SPB was unavailable. On shows, Raja has often been condescending or insulting to him so I think he would have rarely been first choice for him. During that period – late 80s to early 90s – SPB was singing in Hindi, tried his hand at composing and even began to act. So he must have been away more often than before. And for whatever reason, IR cut down the songs he gave to Malaysia, preferring B Grade SPB sound from Mano.
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K
November 26, 2021
Mano singing 25000 songs is not only for Ilaiyaraja
He has sung for Deva, Sirpy, Rajkumar, Shankar Ganesh, Chandrabose
E.g. Sahadevan Mahadevan, Thangamani Thangamani kind of comedy films. Also Ullathai Allitha where he recorded all songs. And this is only in tamil
He is primarily a Telugu singer. Also devotional albums
I guess 25000 is a collection of all these songs and not restricted to Raja compositions
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Kannaa
November 26, 2021
@vijay: when talking of Vijayabhaskar dont forget anbu meghame ingu odi vaa.
Since BR had already mentioned this song and the Thoondil Meen song “vaazhvil sowbaaghiyam vandhadhu” in his post, I skipped them both. But agreed that there is no non-IR 70s without “Anbu Megame”. There are Telugu and Kannada versions of “Anbu Meghame”, but the Tamizh version stands out (IMO).
Among VijayaBhaskar’s films, I like “Aadu Puli Aattam” the most – “uravO pudhumai (SPB-VJ), “maname solaiyaam” (VJ), “poonguyil paaduthu” (VJ), “vaanukku thanthai evanO” (SPB-LRA)
Love the cascading effect Vaani creates with “varavu en, selavu en, kalakkam en” in the song below. Rajni even orchestrates a “cigarette dance”
Like “Paduthaal Purandaal” (vintage SPB), there is also a VijayaBhaskar song which is “naughty” – “mani vilakke, maanthalire” from “Unnai thaan Thambi”. Love B. Vasantha’s interjections (particulary the “thaalaadhammaaaa” that she drags out) and SPB has sung this one with great flair. There is another SPB beauty in “thodangalaam thodaralaam” from “Kaalamadi Kaalam”
Also in the 70s, V. Kumar had “penalla nee oru bommai” and “indha radha krishnan kaadhal enbadhu ragasiyamaanadhalla” (a favorite) from “Sondhamadi Nee Enakku”. There is the terrific (haunting?) “devan vedhamum kannan geethaiyum oru paadhaiyil ingu sangamam” (SPB-PS) from RaajaNaagam. And there is another V Kumar delight in “madhanotsavam rathi Odu thaan” (SPB-VJ) – the Rajni-Taekwondo song :-))
There is a political catchphrase, “when you are in a pit, stop digging”. This is one musical pit we can keep on digging and unearth more than our fondest memories.
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Kannaa
November 26, 2021
@Ravi: I think you meant to say “aanandha dhaagam”. Love the song, but for the clever / mischievous writing 🙂 If it is 80s, my favorite Shyam song is the below. Sorcerers like Shyam and SPB conjure a music potion that has us hooked forever (“ninaithirundhadhu nadandhuvittadhu” is from Mattravai Neril (1980); singing by SPB-Kousalya)
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Kannaa
November 26, 2021
@KayKay: thanks for a great trip down memory lane!…I’m reminded anew how many great songs went in service of the thoroughly mediocre Mr “Jilu Jilu Gulu Gulu” himself, Siva Kumar
Thanks KayKay. BTW, if you ever want to take a break from “Jilu Jillu, Gulu Gulu” (a good benchmark that), you may want to try “Sujatha, I love you Sujatha, believe me, I like you Sujatha…” (Kodeeswaran Magal). An overcaffeinated Sivakumar wooing Shankarabaranam Rajalakshmi is a hoot ! May not be in the same league as “Charming, Beautiful BulBul”. Feeling ecstatic in love is one thing, scaring the heck out of the lover is whole another thing. If I were Sujatha, I’d have escaped to an undisclosed location before the song was over 🙂 Can’t believe SPB took this one up (we all have our unguarded moments, I guess). Also, I’ve seen some humorous takes of Alex from an early show of his (MSV, SPB etc.), but may not have caught this one yet.
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vijay
November 26, 2021
Yeah, a big thanks to RV Udhayakumar for putting his foot down. Not many directors can do that with IR. It meant the early 90s saw a few more SPB deslights coming our way which could have gone to lesser singers
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Filistine
November 26, 2021
Not discounting the brilliance of Agni Natchathiram as an album, another one that comes close to it IMO is Vikram. Look at the song-list: the EDM-ish title track, a rap-driven Vanithamani, a delectable Meendum Meendum Vaa, a dreamy sippikkul oru muthu and finally, a balls-out go-for-broke En jodi Manja kuruvi. All this, backed by a totally bonkers script that did a Mission Impossible ten years before Tom Cruise cottoned on to the idea!
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Filistine
November 26, 2021
@Kanaa: Mano himself mentioned the 25000 in some interview. Yes, I agree that he was great compromise option, but his rendition in a lot of the songs is so sub-par I am surprised IR didn’t push him harder at least. I think IR sadly under-utilised Malaysia Vasudevan. Also, Mano seemed to sing better for AR Rahman, probably because ARR didnt try to get him to imitate SPB
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Madan
November 26, 2021
Filistine : Yes, I love his singing on Muqqala and Thilana Thilana. For that matter, even with Raja, he sang Folkunna Folkuthan well. The problem was Raja tried to make him slot into too many of the things SPB could do and that’s where Mano came up short.
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Madan
November 26, 2021
Fillistine : Yup, Vikram is a wonderful, wonderful album. Another one where he pulled out all stops. There are a bunch of them when we start to really count, lol.
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Kannaa
November 27, 2021
@Madan: Mano also mentioned on Super Singer that Idhayathai Thirudathe landed in his lap because SPB was unavailable.
That is the one I recall. Your reasons for more like that are plausible.
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Kannaa
November 27, 2021
@Filistine: Mano himself mentioned the 25000 in some interview.
Oh, I gathered as much from your earlier comment. I was just wondering if he was himself embellishing those numbers
I just realized that I have a youtube playlist for many who left their mark in TFM (even those whose existence predates mine), but there is not one for Mano. Mean me 🙂 Perhaps, that also explains my bafflement.
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Kannaa
November 27, 2021
Salil Chowdhury was far from prolific in TFM, but in the late 70s, he gave a blockbuster with the song “poovannam pOla nenjam” (Azhiyaadha Kolangal; PJ-PS). SPB’s “naan ennum pOzhudhu” from the same film was less popular. Balu Mahendra’s “Azhiyaadha Kolangal” was not your run-of-the-mill Tamizh film. It was a “vera maari” film as was Salil’s tune. Amaran’s lines in “poovannam pOla nenjam” about entwined hearts and everlasting bonds only elevated the appeal of Salil Chowdhury’s tune.
…engengum inba raagam, en ullam pOdum thaalam…
…inikkum vaazhvile, en sondham nee enakkul vaazhndhidum en dheivam nee…
…pirakkum jenmangal
pinaikkum bandhangal
endrendrum nee
inaindha vaazhvil
pirivum illai thanimaiyum illai
pirandhaal endha naalum unnOdu sera vendum…
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Anuja Chandramouli
November 27, 2021
This thread has everything ❤️
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Shankar
November 27, 2021
@Madan, @KayKay, the exercise of pinning down the best album of IR is a very difficult exercise, almost impossible, given his prolific output. Agni and NN are 2 of my fav albums as well, but growing up, I vividly recall getting blown away by Tik Tik Tik. It doesn’t have the variety that the other albums have. One could say that “Netru Intha Neram” and “Idhu Oru Nila Kalam” are both similar pop numbers whereas the brilliant “Poo Malarndhida” is carnatic/pop fusion and the trendsetter here. That wouldn’t be wrong…but man, what orchestration, it was unheard of prior to that and dare I say…avante garde! I wouldn’t put this as a contender for his best album, but just something that came and blew me (and many others) away!
(The link below has the songs as well as some musical pieces including the title score)
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Madan
November 27, 2021
Shankar: There are so many that may not make the top 3/4 but would still be amazing. Thendrale Ennai Thodu is such a great album, possibly better than many other stellar Mike Mohan albums like Payanangal Mudivathilai, Kunguma Chimizh or Naan Paadum Paadal. But nobody would think of it as the no.1 or 2 Raja album.
I am a big fan of Idhu Oru Nila Kaalam, to a lesser extent of I Love You. But the BGM…man, that’s a gem. If the question of which is the best Raja album is hard enough, best BGM is just impossible.
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Madan
November 27, 2021
I see that the uploader Kiran Subramaniam has uploaded the Seduction theme. Love that one! There was a better upload of the Tik Tik Tik BGM earlier but sadly the copyright axe fell on it.
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sai16vicky
November 28, 2021
Let me also add to the favorite IR album list. My choice would be “Hey Ram”, mainly for one reason — how many music directors do we know (MSV and Rahman come closer with “Rockstar” and “Ninaithaale Inikkum”) can put out an album like this about 2 decades after their arrival? From Wagner to Narsin Mehta to the devotional chants to the psychedelic score.
There is Ajoy Chakraborty. There is DK Pattammal. There is Hariharan and Asha Bhonsle. There is Kamal too. But the mood is all Ilayaraja.
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Madan
November 28, 2021
sai16vicky : To your question as to who could do a Hey Ram two decades after their arrival, this will be the answer BR would give too – S D Burman. His early 70s resurgence was almost the best phase of his career. You do have a bunch of classic albums in the 60s too but in the 70s he did Sharmilee, Abhimaan, Mili, Prem Nagar, Chupke Chupke, all on par with his career best.
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Honest Raj
November 28, 2021
KayKay: I’m reminded anew how many great songs went in service of the thoroughly mediocre Mr “Jilu Jilu Gulu Gulu” himself, Siva Kumar.
This remark would certainly annoy those belonging to my parents’ generation – Sivakumar was the Suriya Anna of their times. 🙂
Anyways, for my part, I’d nominate “Ponvaanam Panneer Thoovuthu”. Of course, it’s understandable given the nature of the song, but Thalaivar’s expressions here are vera ragam. 🙂
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shaviswa
November 29, 2021
Sivakumar’s jilu jilu gulu gulu expressions 😀 😀 😀
What a wonderful description. Thanks @Honest Raj
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Madan
November 29, 2021
Don’t know where else to ask. How are things now in Chennai? I am reading/seeing reports about waterlogging in places like T Nagar and Alwarpet. Hope the rain has abated now?
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RaviC
November 29, 2021
@Vijay,
Both NN and AN, great albums. But if I have to pick one, my choice is NN (with the much under-appreciated Kanni Ponnu). AN has that drishti song – Raja, rajadhi. many won’t agree with me but both the tune and vocal didn’t work for me.
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Kannaa
November 30, 2021
In the year 1978, MSV gave a mega-hit in “kaanchi pattudiththi, kasthuri pOttu vachchi” for the movie “Vayasu Ponnu”. KJY and VJ are too good in this song, although the most noteworthy aspect of this song for me remains VJ’s humming ! Yet again, the notorious syllable-bobble
resurfaces (as I see it), but we won’t go into it 😉
I’ll rewind to the early 70s (back where I began with MSV) for a look at The Comprehensive Eswari (& TheBest Eswari for me; though I say that, I have internal monologs about “this or aadavar ellaam or thuluvadhO ilamai or adadaa enna azhagu & so on” :-)). Eswari started in a standalone humming role with KVM (in a A.P Nagarajan film), had a “pact” with him not to sing for all & sundry, got a waiver to sing for MSV and boy, did she flourish ?! Here is a standount version of Eswari for Jayalalitha in the movie “Kumari Kottam” (1971). Vaali was the lyricist for “naam oruvarai oruvar”. TMS’s follow-up for MGR can’t keep up with Eswari and she vanquishes him here (IMO).
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Kannaa
November 30, 2021
For a good way to wrap my 70s video-posts, I will stray into the 60s 🙂 – 1960, to be precise. The movie is “Vidivelli”, a Sridhar movie. I haven’t seen the movie, but this is a peppy number that I love, a sweet confection that spreads the joy around. If you like AMR, you will like this song, as he is not only the composer, but also one of the singers. Jikki, PS and Tiruchi Loganathan chime along cheerfully, “kOduththu paar paar paar unmai anbai, ninaiththu paar paar paar adhan thembai” (a fine insertion of epizeuxis, for the geeky side in me). This is a “feel-good” song. Given the craziness that has been COVID for a while now (& the sequel is already here, it appears), “feel-good” has gotten a bum rap. With or without COVID, the fragility of life is still alive and kicking. And so, “feel-good” deserves a reprieve, even if for a few rapturous moments !
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Ravi
November 30, 2021
Kanna, I think the humming in Kanchi pattuduthi is by one Savithri and not VJ.
I am with you on “Naam Oruvarai Oruvar”. Easwari breezes through the pallavi and first charanam all by herself and it is a tough act to follow even for TMS!!!
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Ravi
November 30, 2021
Kannaa: Sorry, I mis-spelt your name in my previous post!
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Ravi
November 30, 2021
Kannaa: A year later, in 1979, MSV gave a delightful duet with KJY and VJ in Neela Malargal, not very often heard:
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Anand Raghavan
December 1, 2021
Before NN and AN, can Johny be called Raja’s thriller?
No duets and 5 different solos, with a great BGM to top it all.
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satishkvasan
December 1, 2021
Ilayaraja and Arjun Reddy posts invite the most comments!!
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
December 1, 2021
@Kannaa- how wonderful to see a LRE fan! this is her absolute silken best in the MSV-KRR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypLCqzsg18&ab_channel=RajshriTamil
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Madan
December 1, 2021
Anand Raghavan : I am not super hot on Senorita I Love You and I could live with it if I never had to hear Oru Iniya Manathu again. Yes, En Vaanile and Kaatril Endhan Geetham are sublime. But that makes it a tad weaker than Nizhalgal, which was probably his first Gold with a capital G album.
It’s a little unfair because Senorita is a good song. A song like Yeh Ladka Haye Allah is considered a classic of RD Burman, nobody says it’s an also ran. But Raja’s standards are so high we start nitpicking and don’t rate even tracks that would be otherwise excellent in another composer’s collection that highly. By Raja standards, the orchestration on Senorita is a little noisy and dated but compared to most anybody before him, it’s still pretty high class, just not as interesting as say En Vaanile from the same film.
A sleeper album from the early 80s is Aradhanai. Both Oru Kunguma Chengamalam and Ilam Pani Thulir are gems, especially the latter which has beautiful guitar parts.
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Kannaa
December 1, 2021
@Ravi: Kannaa: Sorry, I mis-spelt your name in my previous post!
Reminds me of the VJ song “N N dru solven …” (Ninaippadhu Niraiverum) for ML Srikanth 🙂 “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck”, the spelling may not matter 🙂 No worries, Ravi.
Btw, I did some digging into the Savitri association with “kaanchi pattuduthi” song. Many of the AV clips either omit her contribution or omit VJ’s contribution (if she did). Recall seeing one site (or clip) crediting both. Anyways, in case you were not aware, she is none other than famous yesteryear actor T. R. Mahalingam’s daughter – Savithri Mahalingam / Savitri / TRM Savithri. In the early part of her life, she plied the Carnatic circuit, but entered movies much later (not more than a few songs I think). As for this song, if there was just a lone female voice with KJY, it has to be Savitri for the starting line and the humming. Her voice has a striking resemblance to Vaani’s voice, which may have caused the confusion with attribution. Kavignar Muthulingam, who penned the lines (& managed to win an award 🙂 ) talks more about this song in a MMFA clip titled “KAVIGNAR MUTHULINGAM TALKS ABOUT KANCHI PATTUDUTHI”. Traditionalists may bask in the afterglow of its success, but the not-so-groups are wont to look askance at some of the lines in the song. Thanks for the correction, again.
Also, a bigger boo-boo on my part was using the slangy “.. pOttu vachchi” instead of the formal “…pOttu vaiththu” in my earlier comment.
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Kannaa
December 2, 2021
@ Ravi, regarding “Neela Malargal” song, here are my thoughts:
This one and “azhage azhagu devadhai” are two of my favorites (in the romantic genre). Here, Sridevi is blind; on the contrary, Kamal is blinded by her beauty. Sridevi tries to grapple with the real world that is invisible to her. For Kamal, Sridevi is the world; at least, she is the cynosure for him. She hopes to construct reality from his responses to her questions. But most of Kamal’s responses tie external reality back to the reality of her.
samples
Q : idhu iravaa pagalaa ?
A : nee nilavaa kadhiraa ? (it depends: nee nilavunaa, idhu iravu, nee kadhirnaa, idhu pagal)
Q : idhu vanamaa maaligaiyaa ?
A : nee malaraa Oviyamaa ? (it depends: nee malarnaa, idhu vanam, nee Oviyamnaa, idhu maaligai)
Q : idhu kuyilaa kuzhalaa ?
A : un kuralin sugame (as befits the sweetness of your voice)
Q : idhu mayilaa maanaa ?
A : avai undhan iname (both, “your kind”; why care for distinctions?)
Q : ingu kili dhaan azhagaa ?
A : un “azhage azhagu” ! (hyperlink to the other song to be released later 🙂 )
Q : indha ulagam peridhaa ?
A : nam urave peridhu (finishes with a bang! nothing is bigger than the scope of our love)
Excellent imagination and crafting behind this one. And there are some common threads between this and that other song (that got drowned out by the cult hit “andhi mazhai pozhigiradhu” from the same movie). Both have Kamal in a lead role. Both have KJY singing for the male lead. Here, Sridevi is blind and in the other song, Kamal is blind (Madhavi’s reactions in that song were lovely). The lines I liked in that other song: “konjugindra sevigal rendum kelvi aanadhu” & “indha mannil idhu pOl penn illaye !” – not your garden-variety flattery 🙂 Kannadasan penned the lines for both these songs (although, tune for this one was composed by MSV and that one by Raja).
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Kannaa
December 2, 2021
@Nimmi Rangaswamy: how wonderful to see a LRE fan! this is her absolute silken best in the MSV-KRR
“Karuppu Panam” is from the 60s, but yes, I like two of the LRE songs (“aadavar ellaam” & “ammammaa keladi thozhi”) from the movie – the former with the better lines and the latter with the better singing (IMO)
Absolute absolute gossamer best ( 🙂 ) for LR Eswari IMO would be her humming in “Aalayamani” (“kallellaam maanikka kallaagumaa”). Simply mind blowing !! A close second would be her humming in “Panam Padaithavan” (“pavazha kodiyile”; MGR-KRV). People may swap 1 & 2 and I’m fine with that. All 60s again.
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
December 2, 2021
@ Kannaa. Wow! Those were all LRE’s best of the best! When did anyone have a discussion on her!!!! Today they might remember her for only the ‘Mariatha’ songs – Her songs for Jayalalitha were so smashing like this one
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Ravi
December 2, 2021
Kanna: Loved your analysis of “Idhu Irava Pagala” and the comparison with “Azhage Azhagu”. Though the latter has its moments, Kannadasan seems to hit a jackpot with every line in “Idhu Irava..”. The punch in the final line : Nam urave peridu is unmistakable. My guess is MSV composed the tune after the lyrics were written.
Kannaa, Nimmi Rangaswamy: If someone can snatch the prize for humming alone, it is Eswari. My favorite is “Pavazha Kodiyile”. Also recall “Veedu varai Uravu”. Here are a couple of more sober songs, one from the 60’s and one from early 70’s:
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Kannaa
December 4, 2021
@ Nimmi Rangaswamy: Today they might remember her for only the ‘Mariatha’ songs
Eswari’s voice is a unique blend of vivacity, sensuousness, buoyancy and exuberance. Although she is not everyone’s cup of tea, without enough allure in the voice, you cannot carve the position she did in TFM for herself over a span of two decades. Regarding how she monopolized “maariaathaa” songs, it only affirms how catholic in spirit she was. Couple more songs of Eswari from the 70s that deserve mention. Watch how the Swagger Queen kick-starts each refrain of “ullam pO endradhu” from “Gnana Oli” with “a-ullam pO endradhu..”. SPB joins in, but is only learning his chops from an expert at this game. Another 70s song of hers (SPB, LRE, MLS, SJ) is “kulir adikkudhey” from “Dhikku Theriyaadha Kaattil” and is worth a listen, although her tremulous “haaaahaahaah” at the beginning of the song was a turn-off for me. Worse, there are intrusive male stomachs in that video clip that I could not stomach 🙂
One more song of hers from the 70s in which she leaves her distinct stamp is “Aye you know me, I’m Queen of Queens (Sridevi)…Aye you know me, I’m King of Kings (Rajini)…kottu kottu melam, thattu thattu thaalam…” Swagger Queen (LRE), Style Prince (SPB), Style King (Rajini) and Sridevi all go on a tear in this number by MSV. It is a phenomenal exhibition of showmanship and all that is fun in cinema. (video title: kottu kottu melam)
Together, LRE and SPB have delighted legions of TFM fans over the years.
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Kannaa
December 4, 2021
@Ravi: With regards to “azhage azhagu devadhai”, I was not scoring just the tune or the poesy in the lines, but the overall song and visuals as a whole. For me, “azhage azhagu devadhai” crackles with Kamal-Madhavi on-screen chemistry that more than makes up for anything the song lacks relative to “idhu iravaa pagalaa”. But I get the basis for your vote in the other direction.
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Nimmi Rangaswamy
December 4, 2021
Thank you and that was lovely @Kannaa
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Aman Basha
December 4, 2021
I feel like both amazed and humbled at the tenor, tone and rhythm of these comments, quite enjoy everything here and to add my philistine two cents, a parallel to Ilaiyaraja-ARR in Hindi Film were the father-son duo of SD and RD Burman.
Also @Madan, when’s your book coming out? And have you found a publishing house?
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Madan
December 4, 2021
Aman Basha: The book is still looking for an abode, as of now. If nothing comes up at all, I will of course self-publish.
Re IRR-ARR and SD-RD, it doesn’t work so well chronologically because SD was the one who took his own sweet time to compose and was content to work on a few assignments a year as long as the music was really good and did well at the BO, while RD worked much faster especially in his early-mid 70s heyday. That said, SD always made music that slowly crept up on you and eventually became a part of your bloodstream. That is, it wasn’t mass sensation kinda music. RD-IR-ARR all achieved that ‘sensation’ quality and captured the imagination of the youth in their early years. All three have a strong rhythmic element in their music; it just happens to be masked in IR’s case because of his equally strong focus on harmony.
There is another wrinkle here in that RD kept knocking at the door through the 60s and delivered hits on Bhoot Bangla, Teesri Manzil and Padosan. But everybody had their ‘camps’ and wouldn’t budge even though RD was succeeding. But for Nasir Hussain and Shakti Samanta, I dare say there may never have been an RD wave. If not nepotism, certainly favouritism was very much a part of Bollywood back then too. Even after RD delivered a knockout album with Teesri Manzil, Shammi went right back to Shankar-Jaikishan for the next 3 years or so even with progressively dwindling returns from the latter.
Compared to all that, IR and ARR found it easier to establish themselves once they provided proof-of-concept via Annakili/Roja. There has always been a greater willingness to give a new, exciting force a chance in Tamil compared to Hindi.
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