There are three types of music – the old, the forever, and the one which is here today and gone tomorrow, says music director Rajan of the famous Rajan-Nagendra fame, who’ve etched their tunes in every Kannadiga’s heart in the ‘forever’ category.
He’s never too far away from the harmonium, it would seem, as he sits in front of one, pensive, looking down at the floor, recalling his days of glory. At 79, he’s still teaching students at his home studio in Bangalore’s Sultanpalya, and at Saptha Swaranjali, his music school and studio in Rajajinagar. He’s invented a new musical notation system (a sort of shorthand) that gives singers very specific guidelines on how they need to sing a particular song.
After a hiatus of almost 10 years, he’s also composing for a Kannada film Minuguva Nakshatragalu . Recording begins this month. His first composition along with his bother Nagendra, for a Kannada film was Sowbhagya Lakshmi way back in 1954, he recalls. Their wish was to give Kannada film music of the time an independent and strong identity.
The brothers Rajan and Nagendra (who died in 2000) perhaps have had the longest-standing music partnership in the film industry, having composed together for over 40 years, and having ruled the Kannada film music scene for the four decades.
Their father was a musician for films of the silent era and they were constantly surrounded by music. The partnership between them worked, says Rajan very simply, because they had a clear division of work. “He would write the lyrics and interact with the singers. I would compose.” Rajan learnt to play the violin from violin vidwan R.R. Keshavamurthy, and maestro T. Chowdiah. “I worked for some time as a typist in the education department and found it similar to the harmonium keys, so I also learnt to play the harmonium. A person was selling his veena for Rs. 25. I bought it and learnt to play the veena. I also used to play the flute; my cheeks would hurt,” he laughs, and recalls in quick succession. “I needed to learn to play everything because I had to know which note and instrument is suitable for which composition.”
Rajan-Nagendra’s music was marked for its melody and the elaborate string sections they used in their compositions. Some of the most famous Kannada films they composed for include Gandhada Gudi, Devara Gudi, Bhagyavantaru, Mantralaya Mahatme, Eradu Kanasu, Naa Ninna Mareyalaare, Hombisilu, Chandanada Gombe, and Bayalu Daari . They also made music for Telugu and Tamil films, apart from other languages too.
The orchestra had a maximum of 80 players, with almost 60 being violinists. Brothers L. Subramaniam and L. Shankar used to be front-row violinists, Ilayaraja and his brother Gangai Amaran would play the keyboards and drums, recalls Rajan. “All the top musicians of today used to play in Madras orchestras then.”
Rajan’s son and musician R. Ananth Kumar, who along with his father trains students in voice culture the music school, recalls his childhood in Madras where he went straight to the studios after school, and of recordings held at Palm Groves and Swagath hotels.
Rajan-Nagendra settled down in Madras for a good 20 years because that’s where the major film studios were; all the work on Kannada films was centred in Madras till about 15 years ago. He recalls how in the pre-studio days, in Madras, there were no sound-proof recording rooms either. “So we would record songs only at night, with two mikes – on for the singer and one for orchestra. And we would do it in an asbestos-covered shooting shed; no fan or AC! The music would be routed to a generator van with a recordist sitting inside.”
It would then be printed on a negative (there was no way to instantly playback whet they had recorded), and they would wait for movie theatres to finish their last show for the night before they could go in and listen to the tracks. And then, edit.
To make sure shrutis of all instruments matched was a challenge. Rajan recalls going to Bombay to get a tuning meter; all the musicians would tune up on that before performing live in the orchestra.
“We would record several takes but the tempo of each one would be different because of voltage problems. So we used a rhythm box to create a click track to maintain tempo. Now its common practise to create a click track, but when we introduced it, there was a lot of opposition from musicians.” It was only in the 60s that Madras got its recording studios with three-channel tracks to record singer, rhythm and orchestra, he says.
Rajan-Nagendra are also credited with bringing the king of Hindi playback, Kishore Kumar, to Kannada films for the first time. “It was for Dwarkish’s film Kulla Agent 000. Kishore Kumar was the topmost singer of the time. We composed the song and took it to Bombay. But we couldn’t get him in one trip. We went several times. Kishore Kumar used to charge about Rs. 4,000 per song then. He wanted more money and more time because it was in a different language. We used to teach him Kannada pronunciation.We used Laxmikant- Pyarelal’s orchestra to record the song finally.”
“When I started composing, most of the musicians were from the Palace Orchestra Mysore), and they knew only western notations. So one of them used to write the composition down and then we would rehearse. I’ve learnt writing notations from there,” muses Rajan.Rajan came up with the new system because he says “after 10 to 15 days after composing, I couldn’t read and sing my own songs!”
Rajan and his son now train students in karaoke singing, and want more youngsters to cut their own private albums, participate in competitions, and perform in shows because “films offer a chance to very few singers”. “Young singers today don’t know how to render songs. That’s why film singers are brought in from Bombay. We help singers develop a vocal range,teach exercises to develop stamina and hold a note for 16 bars,” says Rajan. Son Ananth adds: “We record their voices, graph it and show them where they have gone flat. In reality shows nobody corrects such things.” As the chat winds up, Rajan gets immersed in his harmonium as two of his students sing one more of his melodious compositions “Thaayi Shaarade loka pujithe” from Bettada Hoovu.
