Travelling light: a journey in music
By V Ramnarayan
Chapter 7
It was
his friendship with the sons of a couple of film music directors that
introduced Krishnan to the use of classical or semi-classical music in Tamil
films. He was also an ardent follower of Hindi film music--in fact more
interested in it than in Tamil film songs. One of them, Venkatachalam, was the
son of KV Mahadevan, arguably the best exploiter of raga music during the
1960s, even more attractive to Krishnan's ears than Viswanathan-Ramamurthi, the
star pair among music directors of that era. The other had been Sudarsan, the
son of Subbiah Naidu of an earlier vintage. Through these and other friends
connected to the film industry, Krishnan accumulated a fair knowledge of the
classical and semi-classical music, musicians and others behind the scenes
responsible for the high standard of film music then. This is what he pieced
together from his conversations with these friends and from reading the
newspaper and magazine articles of the time.
Music
was king and queen in Indian cinema in the early 20th century. Those were the
times when the success of a play or film was measured by the number of songs it
featured, when encores prolonged them forever—even in silent films with music
performed live in front of the screen by an assembled band.
Before playback singing—India’s brilliant contribution to cinema—came into
being, the stars of the day had to do their own singing, but not all of them
were musical, while those cast for their singing ability often could not act to
save their lives.
The resultant classic was frequently unintentionally funny, but fans were
undeterred by such incidental shortcomings, for listening to their heroes and
heroines was reward enough.
In Tamil cinema, MK Tyagaraja Bhagavatar was perhaps the biggest draw among the
singing stars of yesteryear, i.e., on a long term basis, excluding the
sensational screen appearances of musical talents such as
MS Subbulakshmi or
GN Balasubramaniam, who made a huge mark
on classical music.
A classically trained musician, Bhagavatar had a powerful yet pliant and mellifluous
voice that traversed a great range and negotiated curves and glissandos
seemingly effortlessly to the utter delight of millions of fans. Among these
ardent enthusiasts were the cognoscenti as much as the man on the street. For
MKT’s music was pure and unalloyed, but with an appeal that transcended that of
proscenium concerts. His greatest hit, Haridas, ran for 114 weeks at the Broadway
theatre, Chennai, a record that remains unbeaten to date.
Bhagavatar was paired famously with S. D. Subbulakshmi. The duo extemporised on
stage to the delight of fans, their electric exchanges leading to their huge
success in films like Pavalakkodi and Naveena Sarangadhara. Their songs Siva peruman kripai vendum and Chanchalam
teerndinbamura became chartbusters.
SD Subbulakshmi, a discovery of director (and later, husband) K.
Subramaniam, was to achieve critical acclaim in his ambitious
Tyaga Bhumi (1939), a distinctly feminist film
based on a novel by Kalki Krishnamurti that ran into censor trouble because of
its “seditious” content. The song
Desa
sevai seyya vareer by
D. K. Pattammal, which backgrounded a procession of
freedom fighters, giving musical expression to patriotic sentiment, led to the
banning of the film by the British government. Interestingly, the Carnatic
musician and composer to have the greatest impact on Tamil film music,
Papanasam Sivan, played Sambhu Sastri, the protagonist of Tyaga Bhumi. In an
extraordinary reversal, a number of Sivan's compositions for films found their
way to the concert stage. They are so classically pure that they are today
unrecognisable as film songs.
The other Subbulakshmi, MS, was to lift the medium of cinema to a
higher plane when worshipping crowds fell at her feet during the filming of Meera, directed by Ellis R. Dungan and
masterminded by husband Sadasivam. For all the huge popularity of Kalki
Krishnamurti’s Katrinile varum
geetam and Anda nalum
vandidado from this tale of a
young female Rajasthani saint, their impact could not exceed by too much that
of Ma Ramanan (Papanasam Sivan) from her debut film Seva Sadanam, based on
Premchand’s reformist novel (made by that man K. Subramaniam, who else?). The
song served to redefine film music with its unadulterated classicism; it has in
fact passed into the mainstream of the Carnatic concert oeuvre.
Sakuntalai, a musical
based on Kalidasa’s classic, had earlier starred that matinee idol among
Carnatic musicians,
G. N. Balasubramaniam, opposite
M.S. The pair was a huge draw and the box
office was kept busy by this extravaganza by Dungan. The duets
Premaiyil yavum and
Manamohananga anangey were responsible for that success.
Carnatic vocalist S. Rajam and his younger brother
S. Balachandar were both to sing songs in films in
which they acted. In fact,
Balachandar, a child prodigy who became famous as a
veena player, was a versatile all rounder, who acted in and directed films,
besides playing many instruments.
Arguably
the greatest all round star among the singer-actors of Tamil cinema was
P. U. Chinnappa, who came to films via the same route that Tyagaraja Bhagavatar
took: stage plays. Chinnappa could act and that is where he was different from
some of the other heroes like Bhagavatar and
G. N. Balasubramaniam, essentially singers who strayed into
films. Following in his father’s footsteps, Pudukkottai Ulaganatha Pillai
Chinnasami became a stage actor at age five, in 1922. The play
Sadaram, the story of a thief, catapulted
Chinnappa to fame. His films
Aryamala, Kannagi, Jagadalapratapan and
Harishchandra established him as a leading actor,
who besides singing his own songs, fought his own fights, with mastery over a
number of martial arts.
An unusual singing star was K. B. Sundarambal, a box office draw for her golden
voice and the devotional fervour of her singing. Both on stage and in films,
she captured the hearts of her adoring audiences, playing both male and female
roles with consummate ease. Her stage and life partner S. G. Kittappa was
perhaps the most talented singer the Tamil stage had seen, and together, they
made history. Sundarambal sang songs that were to become evergreen melodies in
such films as Nandanar,
Manimekhalal, Avvaiyar, Tiruvilaiyadal and Poompuhar. Her performance as Avvai, the Tamil
poet-saint, was so convincing that a whole generation of children believed her to
be the original Avvai Patti.
Another
singing role she played was male, that of Nandan in
Nandanar, which also had the classical vocalist
Maharajapuram Viswanatha Iyer in it! In
Manimekhalai, which followed, Sundarambal was paired
with Kottamangalam Cheenu, a fine singer who was later consigned to oblivion. A
later version of Nandanar Charitram, had the peerless Dandapani Desigar,
playing the role of a dalit devotee, and singing movingly in his ringing
baritone.
Another popular male vocalist, who made it big in the 1940s and 50s, was a
namesake of the greatest flautist Carnatic music has known. TR Mahalingam was
one of those singing stars who bagged acting roles because of their singing
ability, but he was a success in both romantic songs and bhakti music. Chittoor
V. Nagiah was another famous actor capable of singing his own songs, for he was
a fully trained Carnatic vocalist, a conscientious one at that. For his role as
Tyagaraja in the film on the celebrated composer’s life, he reportedly took
lessons from
GNB and Musiri Subramania Iyer, himself a
singing star in and as Tukaram.
Of South India’s singing stars of a more recent vintage, P Bhanumati and
Rajkumar achieved greater fame than most. Bhanumati who later became the
principal of the Government Music College, Madras, was a classically trained
vocalist who had early success singing her own songs in Tamil and Telugu, but
the Kannada star was a late bloomer, who yet became an enduring icon in his
dual role. Like Bhanumati, S. Varalakshmi was another actress from Andhra who
had a nice singing voice and used it to effect in films.
Around
1960, Krishnan had heard the mellow vocie of PB Srinivas for the first
time--under the music direction of MB Srinivasan, the original whose
experiments in choral music involving Indian tunes gave some memorable film
songs. It was at Tuticorin's Charles theatre that Krishnan saw such movies as
Paathai Teriyudu Paar in which the two Srinivas (an)s had collaborate dto
produce some glorious music.
G
Ramanathan, SV Venkataraman and Adinarayana Rao were among south Indian music
directors in films to deploy classical music to great effect in their movies.
The first two were perhaps the top two music directors of the 1940s. Continuing
to be prominent in the 1950s, GR composed the music for nearly a hundred films.
Among his significant efforts was his turning Subramania Bharati's verses into film
songs.
A
landmark film of the 1960s was Tiruvilaiyadal, based on the Tamil myth of
Tiruvilaiyadal Puranam, featuring the many miracles of Lord Siva who appeared
in human form on earth. Though the main male singer of the film was TM
Soundararajan, it also had one song by
Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna, the famous Carnatic vocalist, who later became
a Sangita Kalanidhi of the Madras Music Academy. Krishnan found it intriguing
that in a scene in which a Tamil singer and a north Indian vocalist compete in
court, TMS (the Tamil voice of Sivaji Ganesan) defeats Balamuralikrishna as
lip-synced by TS Baliah, though to his ears the so-called north Indian's
ragamalika (Oru naal poduma) sounded superior to TMS's Gaurimanohari (Paattum
naane).
Another
song by Balamuralikrishna, Tangaratham from the film Kalai Kovil was
a sensational hit. The film had its excellent music composed by veena vidwan
Chittibabu, whom Krishnan had the pleasure of meeting, when they were both
waiting at a bus stop! Imagine a top-flight musician of today depending on
public transport! Krishnan found the charismatic artist with a sizable fan following among the young to be a simple
and unaffected young man.
