Part
1
naa
paaTa panchaamRtam
naa gaanaana geervaaNi snaanalu saagincha
naa paaTa panchaamRtam
Ghantalasa, was undoubtedly, the most difficult act to follow.
When the meters of the music and the beauty within the lyrics
were reaching their crescendo from the 1940s well into the early
70s, Ghantasala moved alongside them, lending his voice to the
most mellifluous tunes and tones that Telugu film industry had
ever had the fortune of witnessing. His voice became so intertwined
with the familiar faces on the screen that it sounded absurd
and incongruous watching the familiar face mime to a different
playback. "vaalmiki" was Ghantasala, "raamuDu"
was Ghantasala, "lakshmanuDu" was Ghantasala, and
so was "chaakali vaaDu" who HAD to be Ghantasala.
No matter the character that was protrayed on the screen, when
the prose gave way to poetry and background music came to fore,
all seemed well with the world, when the characters started
mouthing to Ghantasala's playback. Situation was no question,
emotion was no problem, pitch was never an issue and tempo played
along to his tune - the film industry was truly lucky to have
such a consummate singer who had the enormous ability to evoke
any emotion, suit to any situation and fit just any character
- hero, villain, comedian, character actor and such. It is no
exaggeration that Ghantasala probably touched every human emotion
that could be visited within the purview of film music, lent
his voice to probably every possible situation that could be
captured with the 24 frames, swam the breadths and covered the
depths of what stands as Telugu film music. His popularity and
his wide acceptance were such that it totally eclipsed the question
that was as eventual as it was inevitable - after Ghantasala,
who? It became impossible for anybody to imagine any other voice
resonating in the background while the characters in the foreground
went through their motions. True, Ghantasala was indeed the
toughest act to follow.
vallaki
meeTaga pallava paaNi
anguLi chaeyana pallavinee
Saarada swaramula sanchaaraaniki
charaNamu landinchanaa
Time slid a couple of decades along the scale. Commerciality
crept into all possible corners of film music; beats replaced
melody, synchronized singing gave way to tracks, the word meaning
lost its meaning, emotions in a song merely meant touching the
higher notes. At this painful juncture stood the last singer
who could categorically be termed as an icon, whose prolificness
paralleled the other great singer who passed on the baton a
few decades ago. In the period between the times when film music
was at its zenith and when film music has been reduced to cuts
and pastes, borrows and steals, mixes and tracks, where it had
the fluctuating fortunes of touching the absolute peaks in a
handful of movies and tumbling to its abysmal depths in more
than handful of movies, this singer had great fortunes associating
himself with the best while having the misfortune of lending
his voice to the mundane and mediocre at the same time. Nevertheless,
when the books on Telugu film music are finally closed, he would
have as much praise and as many pages devoted to his achievements,
glories and paens as his predecessor Ghantasala, for the sheer
variety in the output, the quality in the same, and the driving
force of all, the passion with which he dedicated himself to
a lifetime of singing. Setting comparisons aside, he had a tougher
challenge adjusting to the fast changing cultures that defined
film music over the past few decades - from melody to foot-tap,
from foot-tap to fast, from fast to beat, from beat to the eventual
rock bottom, the track. He transcended technologies, he rose
above the inane lyrics, he made the insipid interesting, he
added pep, he gave character, in all he breathed life to the
song. The singer who made his name a home for clarity, vivacity,
and quality had homes in places more than one - Telugu, Tamil,
Kannada, Tulu, Malayalam, Hindi, the singer who can categorically
be called as the last man standing - S.P.Bala Subramanyam, or
Balu in short.
gaLamu
kolanu kaagaa
prati paaTa padmamaegaa
padamu vellivirisi raagaa
girisati paada peeTHi kaadaa
For a man whose career has spawned generations, genres, forms
and types of music, Balu has redefined the art of playback singing
for the new age, which isn't merely the conveying of the emotions
of the characters played on the screen, but elevating the art
by adding all the new and the necessary ingredients that became
a part of the art at the turn of the decades and at the turn
of the century. Mayor Rayudu has a deep voice, husky is tone
and gruff in tenor. He sounds as though his voice comes down
from the deepest valleys resonating upwards through the walls
of his speech system. Balu steps into the shoes of Rayudu and
becomes Rayudu while rendering "nacchina fuDDoo vecchani
beDDoo siddam raa frenDoo takkina vannee pakkana peTTi paTTara
O paTToo". Mada Venkateswara Rao has a high pitch and a
light in weight voice. It just floats above the normal sounding
quite high. Balu imitates it pitch perfectly while rendering
"sooDu pinnamma paaDu pillaaDoo paina paina paData nanTaaDoo".
The thousands of commercial songs that Balu has sung throughout
his career bear a testament to his amazing adapatability of
moulding his voice to a variety of actors, imitating, mimicking,
sounding just like the playing parts, making himself disappear
in the process. Towards the latter part of the 80s, continuing
in the 90s and into the new millennium, when songs that could
remembered and cherished for a long time were very far and quite
few between, Balu constantly reinvented himself, finding the
zeal, inspiration and the motivation, whenever he stepped in
front of the microphone. While it is quite easy to ride on the
high wave singing one great song after another, hogging the
limelights and the laurels, the true mettle of the singer comes
to full fore, while making the ordinary sound extra-ordinary,
transforming the mundane into much interesting and infusing
life into the insipid.
sruti
layalu mangaLahaaratulai
swara saraLi swaagata geetikalai
prati kshaNam sumaarchanam
sarasvatee samarpaNam
Before
it got a lot worse, it was a lot better. The era of the early
to late 70s which saw the infusion of new talent in all departments,
taking the cue and clue from their illustrious predecessors,
ushered a new era of new voices - lyricists, singers, music
directors directors and above all, tasteful producers. The glut
of small budget movies from the production houses of Yuva Chitra,
Navatha, Gopi Krishna, Taraka Prabhu and the like, allowed the
lyricists to be at their literary best, thus giving the music
directors enough to play with and play against, thereby contributing
the phenomenal rise of Balu. Chakravarthy, Satyam, Ramesh Naidu,
Rajen-Nagendra, Illayaraja and such talented music directors
who started their careers alongside Balu, gave him just the
right work to earn him enough recognition and build up on it.
The easing of the voice of lead playback from the Ghantasala
into Ramakrishna, from Ramakrishna into Balu, also marked the
slow transition of the telugu song which centered heavily around
the classical structure into a more lighter and lilting in mood
and tone. But for the occasional "SankaraabhraNam"
and such classical purist's delights, Balu's career sailed smoothly
on the sails of light music, where he carved a niche for himself.
For a self-declared novice in traditional classical music, Balu's
grasp of the structure of seven notes, it's many variations,
combinations and intonations pars anyone trained in classical,
evident amply in quite a few songs as "sri tumbura naarada
naadaamrutam" (bhairava dweepam), "maanasa veeNa madhugeetam"
(pantulamma), "sa ri ga ma pa da ni swara dhaara"
(sree vaariki praema laekha) and the like. As much as it is
impossible to cover all the facets of the tens of thousands
of his renditions, a worthy start would be observing his career
by his handling of the nava rasas.
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