Manasa Tullipadake

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Song: Manasa Tulli Padake
Movie: Srivariki Premalekha
Year: 1984
Director: Jandhyala
Composer: Ramesh Naidu
Singers: S Janaki
Lyrics: Veturi Sundararama Murthy
Cast: Naresh, Purnima
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This beautiful song is from a classic comedy Srivariki Premalekha by Jandhyala. Known as 'Hasya Brahma' Jandhyala is considered to have brought clean humour to Telugu movies and his legacy still leaves on, in the form of 60 movies (most of them comedies) and many brilliant comedy artistes whom he introduced (like Brahmanandam, Suttivelu, Sutti Veerabhadra Rao etc). Even to this day, when a Jandhyala movie comes on TV the entire family sits down and laughs together, which is probably his most enduring legacy! In his own words 'To be able to laugh is a luxury, to make others laugh is an art, and to be unable to laugh is a disease. Jandhyala's movies also had many beautiful songs like this one, composed by Ramesh Naidu and penned beautifully by Veturi! The initial doubts in the mind of a young girl in love, wondering whether the guy she loves would reciprocate his love or not has been beatifully written, put to music and captured!
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Maavi Chiguru Tinagaane

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Song: Mavi Chiguru Tinagaane

Movie: Seetamaalakhmi
Year: 1978
Director: K Viswanath
Composer: KV Mahadevan
Singers: SP Balasubramanyam, P Suseela
Lyrics: Devulapalli Krishna Sastry
Cast: Chandramohan, Talluri Rameswari
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Just the name Maavi Chiguru conjures up a brilliant image to mind, the soft shoots of mango leaves. This song, penned by Devulapalli (which incidentally won him Best Lyricist Nandi) similarly conjures up such images, especially of a young and demure Talluri Rameswari. This song, from Seetamalakshmi is the debut movie of the FTII Pune graduate and won her a lot of critical acclaim. She is also the first in a long list of young and beautiful 'Rajshiri' heroines, having acted in the 1978 hit Dulhan Jo Piya Man Bhaaye and was also probably among the first telugu and south indian heroines to make a break in Bollywood. As a innocent vilage girl, with two plaits, large expressive eyes, flowers adorning her hair, nose stud, Rameswari looks the part in this movie!
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Happy Birthyday Bapu

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Song: Emani Le

Movie: Mantrigari Viyyankudu
Year: 1983
Director: Bapu
Composer: Ilaiyaraja
Singers: SP Balasubramanyam, S Janaki
Lyrics: Veturi Sundararama Murthy

Cast: Chiranjeevi, Purnima Jayaram
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Dec 15th is the birthday of the great 'Bapu' the first half of the famous 'Bapu'-'Ramana' combination. Bapu, born as Sattiraju Lakshminarayana is one of the most successful directors in Telugu Film industry. Together with Mullapudi Venkataramana, he created wonderful characters (Rao Gopala Rao in Mutyala Muggu) and sequences which have remained with Telugu audiences over the years! He is also an artist par excellence, so much so that the word 'Bapu Bomma' has become synonymous with a beatiful young telugu girl, with large expressive eyes (deer like), long hair, small waist etc. A collection of his paintings can be seen and bought here. His movies have always stood for their beauty, sense of humour, unforgettable characters and also wonderful music. Mantrigari Viyyankudu is one of those rare movies where Ilaiyaraja has worked with Bapu and this song with its rich melody is one of my favorites.
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Aakulo Aakunai

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Song: Aakulo Aakunai
Movie: Meghasandesam
Year: 1983
Director: Dasari Narayana Rao
Composer: Ramesh Naidu
Singers: P Suseela
Lyrics: Devulapalli Krishna Sastry

Cast: ANR, Jayasudha
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Megha Sandesam was Telugu's answer to the wave of art house movies during the 80s. Dasari Narayana Rao, famous for out and out commercial movies chose to make a art house movie and it won awards by the bucketful! It was one of the few Telugu movies to be shown at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and won 4 National Film awards, including Best Regional Fim (Telugu), Best Music Director, Best Male Playback Singer and Best Female Playback Singer. The movie won 27 awards in total, a record to this day for a Telugu movie. I am not sure how the movie fared at the box office, but the music lives to this day. Ramesh Naidu, has perhaps never received his due as a composer, even though he created masterpieces like this one! In particular I like this song, Aakula Aakunai which shows a petite and beautiful Jayasudha yearning for becoming one with the nature! A note on the lyrics, which according to musicindiaonline were penned by Veturi Sundararamamurthi, but I am sure I read somewhere that the lyrics were written by Devulapalli Krishna Sastry garu. I am so sure because I read that he was vacationing in the Nilgiri hills and he was so taken by the beauty of the hills that he was inspired to write this song! Inspiration is key for arts, especially for poetry which infact is the story of Megha Sandesam, a educated, married poet who finds inspiration in a Devadasi to write wonderful poetry!
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Vidhata Talapuna

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Song: Vidhata Talapuna
Movie: Sirivennela
Year: 1986
Director: K Viswanath
Composer: KV Mahadevan
Singers: SP Balasubramanyam, P Suseela
Lyrics: 'Sirivennela' Seetarama Sastry
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The first song ever penned for a movie by the legendary Sirivennela Seetarama Sastry garu! The fact that he became known with the movie name before his name tells a story in itself! More on Sastry garu can be found here. And an interesting commentary on the lyrics of this song, here. Another interesting facet of this song (and also the movie) is that, flute reneditions were rendered by Pt. Hari Prasad Chaurasia. The lyrics, the music, the flute interludes together blend and make this song a classic and a 16 anaala telugu paata!
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Namaskaram

Namaskaram! Although I already have another blog, for a long time I wanted to start a blog on old telugu songs. I would like this blog to be a collection of videos from You Tube and other such video sites, where other lovers of of telugu songs would have uploaded videos of old telugu songs! This is as much an attempt to collect videos of my favorite songs and please myself as it is an attempt to present visitors with an eclectic collection of such videos available on the internet. There might already be websites and blogs catering to this, some very successfully, so this is no means an idea to compete or to emulate them! I am merely treating this as yet another hobby, yet another happy pursuit! My aim is to publish atleast (but not limited to) one song per day. Merely publishing the you tube link would be easy, so I will endeavour to post some information about the song or the movie or the singers or the technicians or the lyricists etc so that the flavour of the song would increase. As I mentioned above this will be a collection of old telugu songs. Now old does not necessarily mean 1960s and 70s, anything thats not new/latest is old in my dictionary. But at the same time, as a rule I will try to avoid posting songs within last 5 years. I also plan to appropriately tag/label the songs, so that at some point, when there are enough songs one can click on labels and see groups of songs! Also, at some point I will attempt to make a break into posting in telugu. Telugu is my mother tongue and is a very sweet language, but having studied Hindi in school, my grip on telugu is not very strong! Infact its so bad that I believe I think in English! It is indeed pitiable, so I will try to address that at some point, once I feel comfortable with posting regularly! But at the moment, this blog will be in English!

Well, I promised myself so many things above! Lets see how regular I will be (I am quite irregular with my other blog) and how many of the above things I follow meticulously! Wish me luck!