SPB The God of Playback Singing...In Ten Episodes

The year was 1992. The First Gulf War had ended and the world was cooling off after a thirty-five nation coalition, led by the United States, handed out a decisive defeat to Iraq and its supreme leader, Saddam Hussein. The situation in Bosnia was rapidly deteriorating due to an ethnic conflict between the Serbs and Bosnians. A hundred thousand people, predominantly Bosnian Muslims, would be massacred by the end of the conflict. India had just managed to avert a balance-of-payments near-miss that had brought the country to its knees and to the brink of bankruptcy. The government had to air-dash sixty-seven tons of bullion to European banks to secure a $600 million loan so that we could pay our monthly bills.  It was a historic low-point for the country.   The situation forced the then Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao, to announce sweeping economic reforms that would open up India's economy and eventually pull three-hundred million people out of poverty. Just when things were looking

A film artiste said this about two of his biggest inspirations in acting: "If it had not been for Sivaji Ganesan, I would have never appreciated Marlon Brando". His point was that Ganesan was the medium through which he understood and appreciated the grammar of Brando's craft. It is perhaps the equivalent of people claiming to realize god through their guru. For me, Balu was that "medium", especially to get to Mohammad Rafi. For some reason, I had passionately loathed Rafi. Not because I had listened to him enough and made up my mind, but I had just decided not to like him. In general, I was so singularly focused on being a Balu bigot that I took it as a personal slight if someone so much as mildly admired another singer. I thought they had lost their mind or out to irk me.  It was somehow easier liking Kishoreda. I mean, what was not to like: the booming voice, the quirky personality, the comic timing, the yodeling, and of course, his legendary collaboration wi

Two hundred years from now, when our descendants read their history books, 1989 will come in for special mention as a year of seminal proportions. Here is why. The world went through a Visu-caliber drama from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution when Communism found a home in Soviet Union till Karl Marx's grand philosophy that had fanned across the world, collapsed like bicycles parked in a Chennai cinema cycle stand. That collapse happened in 1989. It was a "red-letter" year not just due to the death of a philosophy, for that kind of creative destruction of ideas happens all the time. It was the fact that the  United States and Soviet Union were on a path of mutually-assured destruction and in the process were taking the whole world along with them. If it were not for Gorbachev's pet project, Perestroika , which caused the disintegration of the Soviet Union and a cluster of Eastern Bloc countries, and brought them western-style freedoms (such as McDonald's burgers and L

Okay, here is a confession. If someone were to hold a gun up to my head and coerce out my Honest Top 10 SPB songs, I wouldn't look past my 'Emergency  Balu-Mottai' playlist stored on my iPhone. It would be as simple as that. Of course, if I were in a more considerate mood (who is, with a gun on his head, one may ask?), I would perhaps throw in an honorary MSV or AR Rahman number, but even that would be highly unlikely. I am the real McCoy when it comes to SPB-Ilaiyaraja fanatics. Otherwise (with no gun pointing at my head), I consider myself to be a person of highly eclectic musical tastes (sorry for the immodesty): I listen to old Hindi film songs till the tape gets stuck in the player; I am an ardent Jagjit Singh bhakt; my head bobs equitably to Mozart's Symphony No. 40 as it does for ML Vasanthakumari's RTP. I didn't eat for two days when Abba split; I love The Beatles and Dire Straits like I love chole bhatura and parota-korma. But then, when I am depressed,

The term "Golden Age" has its origins in Greek and Roman mythology and is perhaps maligned in its casual overuse, especially in the filmy context. Many a superannuated artiste and film technician have tried to usurp that moniker for the era that they had peaked in. The Greeks had referred to the Golden Age to mean a mythical age of harmonious utopia, where everyone lived a virtuous life like MGR (of his movies). The gods and humans freely co-mingled and were often indistinguishable. Hindu mythology had an equivalent for it called the "Satya Yuga". When scribes and historians ascribe a certain period as a golden age, they are probably thinking of a few things: convergence of talents, great partnerships, and memorable creative output that stands the test of time. For example, the 1950s and 60s are called the Golden Age of Hindi Film music because great music composers, singers, lyricists, actors, and directors descended into Bombay at almost the same time and produced

1981 is a tough year to slot. I mean, there were no earth-shaking world events that took place that year. Yes, there were a few failed and some successful assassination attempts on world leaders. Yeah, I know. "Successful" and "assassination" sound incongruous together, but you get the picture. Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II escaped attempts on their lives, while Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), and Mohammad-Ali Rajai (Iran) weren't so lucky. The Cold War was at its climax. The nations of the world were divided up as satellites of the super powers: United States and Soviet Union. Countries like India walked the sham middle-path of non-alignment but everyone knew that the shadow of the big-brother,  hafta vasoolis  loomed large over every country. Indira Gandhi was back as the Prime Minister after successfully toppling the Janata Party government of Morarji Desai and Charan Singh. As far as the Indian movie scene was concerned, it was the age

The year was 1979. The hippies were drifting away. The universalism of the sixties and the seventies was wearing off with them. Democracies had stabilized and military dictators were bringing a semblance of uneasy calm to their territories. India was making a valiant attempt to come out of the gloom of the Emergency. The world seemed to be heading to a better place. Two events, though, would perhaps inextricably change the world for several decades to come. A popular movement by students, maulvis, and leftists led to the overthrow of the Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran, installing the US-backed Ayatollah Khomeini as its supreme leader.  Towards the end of the year, the Grand Mosque of Mecca, considered to be the holiest place for a billion Muslims, was besieged by armed militants with a goal to dislodge the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Their motive was to return to the "original ways of Islam" and repudiate everything perceived to be western - TV, sports, music, and mate