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

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...

  Let us get one thing straight as an arrow, folks. Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam , aka SPB aka Balu is the God of playback singing. Well, you may shrug your shoulders and say, that is too much of a sweeping encomium, even for someone as accomplished as Balu. Bestowing godliness upon a musically untrained film singer just because he is the recent sentimental favorite, is not how it works, you may argue.  You may further  contend that India brims with eminent musical talent that can perform unfathomable feats. Artists that: hit perfect pitch effortlessly; sing chittaswarams at the speed of Usain Bolt; utter swerving sargams @ a thousand rpm without moving a facial nerve; and milk the essence of seventy-two melakarta ragas in an eight-minute kirtana. So, what is the big deal about this Balu guy, you may ask? My counter to you would be: Yup. I get all of that (ok, I don't). But  when it comes to film music, the most popular and the most egalitarian form of m...