The movie was about a family committed to classical music and dance. Mahadevan in the Telugu film Sankarab h aranam ( The Jewel of Shiva ). Chithra) were an immense contribution to South Indian film music.īalasubrahmanyam, who received six national awards and many other prizes, won his first national award for the songs composed by K. The combined harmonies of the Ilaiyaraaja-Balasubrahmanyam-Janaki trio (later joined by K.S. Three thousand of his 10,000 Tamil songs were produced in collaboration with legendary Indian film composer Ilaiyaraaja. Up until last year, he was being hired by young song writers and film composers. Notwithstanding these limitations, the extraordinary musical talent of Balasubrahmanyam is undoubted and rightly celebrated by tens of millions across the subcontinent and internationally.ĭuring his more than five-decade career, Balasubrahmanyam recorded over 40,000 songs in 16 languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Sanskrit and Urdu, many of them his own compositions. These movies provide regular work for hundreds of talented individuals, but the clichéd character of these films, and their commercial success, can artistically entrap and reduce the vision of their creators. Many attempt to sensitively explore human life in all its emotional and social dimensions, but these are overshadowed by the hundreds of superficial love stories and action adventures released each year in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and other Indian languages. Indian cinema releases an extraordinary number of films, often in excess of 1,800 features annually. Janki, Ilayarajah and SPB (Photograph: Wikimedia) Such was his ability to grasp by just listening.” Viswanathan noted: “Balu would listen to the tune just once and would be ready for the take. These skills, and his ability to rapidly absorb the essential musical elements of any song, were employed by numerous composers and film directors and his career quickly took off. He was able to seamlessly transition from soft to loud volumes and higher and lower registers without distracting from the mood, and to also quiver notes (known as “gamak”) that intensifies the sweetness and romantic passion of the song. SPB had a naturally sweet, energetic and youthful voice, but one that possessed a maturity and emotional depth. Eight days after its production, he was invited to record non-Telugu songs for another movie. Two years later, he began his playback singing career in Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna, a Telugu-language film. In 1964, SPB won an amateur singing competition held in Madras by the Telugu Cultural Organisation. The two basic musical traditions-Carnatic in south India and Hindustani in the north-are based on thousands of ragas that provide melodic structures, tone and an improvisational framework. Harikatha is a performance genre using poems or songs about the Hindu gods and involves embellishments and techniques commonly employed in Indian classical music. While SPB was interested in music from an early age, his first influences were from his father, S. Charan, are both popular singers and film actors in South India, was born in 1946 to a Telugu family in Nellor, Andra Pradesh. His extreme-right Hindu fundamentalist regime is openly hostile to all genuinely creative artists, who attempt to elevate the cultural horizons and critical thinking of the broad masses, let alone challenge its communalist ideology and provocations.īalasubrahmanyam, whose sister, S. Modi’s reference to culture is equally cynical. Political responsibility for Balasubrahmanyam’s death, along with tens of thousands of other needless fatalities, lies with the failure of the Indian government to take any serious measures to prevent the spread of the highly infectious virus. Modi’s trite and perfunctory comments are hypocritical. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to SPB’s death with a routine tweet: “With the unfortunate demise of Shri SP Balasubrahmanyam, our cultural world is a lot poorer.”