Music has been a synonymous adjective of divinity, serenity and spirituality. It is a stream of blissfulness running through our veins letting us experience the newness in everything. Few films remains immortal beyond the eras with the blend of musical realms and Telugu film Sankarabharanam has been a beautiful illustration of how musical showpieces with classical essence can break the barriers of language and boundaries and reach everyone. ‘Sankarabharanam’ and the versatile icon ‘SP Balasubramaniam’ are two inseparable ones. Over the span of three decades, the magic remains evergreen and now the digitally restored version of Sankarabharanam dubbed in Tamil is gearing up for release and shortly. SP Balasubramaniam who had crooned the songs in original version of Telugu has repeated the magic yet again. As the audio launch is scheduled to happen, the legend speaks on his unforgettable part of his life for 30 years with this classical hit soon reaching us in Tamil version.
“The number of hours I have spoken about Sankarabharanam over 30 years would run into infinity and this is an epical journey in my career. I still remember the time when the film was shot in Telugu; my brother like filmmaker K. Viswanath narrated the story to my father at my home. He requested my father to ask me if I could record the songs for this film before other tracks. During that time, I was recording for around 4-5 songs a day. When Viswanath wanted me to croon the numbers, I openly confessed that I’m not expert in classical genre and someone else than me would do complete justice,” says SP Balasubramaniam and continues to thank Pugalzhendhi, assistant of K Viswanath for training him on the Carnatic panorama of music. “I used to hear the songs recorded in the voice of Pugazhendhi relentlessly to get used to the track and then recorded the tracks,” says SPB.
He doesn’t miss to mention that Sankarabharanam despites being a Telugu film was the first of its kind movie to have a successful run in many theatres of Tamil Nadu for a year. The film was later dubbed in Malayalam, but the original Telugu songs were retained and the remake in Hindi was indeed more successful.
Moreover, SP Balasubramaniam rejoices over the cherishing memory of Sankarabharanam as the film gained him the first National award. The film also won several National awards for playback singer Vani Jayaram, music director KV Mahadevan, Best Regional Award for Indira Gandhi National Integration. “We as a team of Sankarabharanam have come across the globe tasting its success across far-flung corners of map,” utters Balasubramaniam, who assures that the film dubbed in Tamil with digital restoration will be a delightful experience for the present generation of audience.
ABOUT THE FILM SANKARABHARANAM
The film stars late actor J.V. Somayajulu, Manju Bhargavi and Chandra Mohan in lead roles. Late cinematographer Balu Mahendra has handled cinematography.
Sankarabharanam was originally produced by Poornodaya Movie Creations and is now released by T.N. Arts Rathnam and is produced by P.S. Hariharan and T.B. Senthaamarai Kannan under the banner of Sri Sabha Girivasan Movies.
The film is getting ready for release on October 2.
