Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Arudra's film songs

I read some of Arudra's books and poetry and always felt that his film songs were much better than his poetry. His film songs came out in five volumes compiled by Ramalakshmi Arudra. I just noticed a long list of possible corrections
http://www.andhraprabhaonline.com/cinespecial/article-51703
by Kampalle Ravichandran (కంపల్లె రవిచంద్రన్‌) published in 2009. I have this set and go back to them off and on and this list may be useful for me.
I came across this link looking for the origins of the javali 'antalone tellavare'. It is attributed to Arudra in the film Muddubidda (1956) but according to this 1891 book of R.C. Day (link from Paruchuri Sreenivas), page 79, the javali was one of the most popular in nineteenth century; but there were some regional variations in the lyrics. The film version of the lyrics are here
My favourite song from the film is chitti potti varala muta
P.S. I thought that I mentioned this before but it may be somewhere else. Arudra's film songs are generally written in simple telugu understandable to most whose exposure is mainly to spoken Telugu. Here is a story from one of his sons in law Kalyan Mukherjea told to me about ten years ago. Arudra was once travelling by rickshaw in Vijayawada and there was an Arudra film song played somewhere. The rickshawwala hummed along, then slapped his thigh and said that 'that bastard really knew how to write songs ' or something along those lines (Kalyan did not know Telugu and so the exact words were lost). According Kalyan, Arudra thought that was one of the best compliments to him.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Sir,

I am a performing dancer and a PhD student doing research in Javalis and Kshetrayya padams in cinema. My website - www.jananisureshram.com. I have been following Minai's (cinemanritya) and your blogs closely. I saw in one of your other posts that you had asked Mr. Sreenivas Paruchuri about more information on "Antalone Tellavare". Have you gotten more information on the availability of this Javali in any book? And can you also help me with translating the meaning of this Javali in english?

Thanks in advance,
Best,
Janani