The boldly astringent music of Vijaya Bhaskar

The composer, whose association with Puttanna Kanagal is legendary, scored music for a staggering 720 films. S R Ramakrishna pays a birth centenary tribute to one of India’s most prolific composers.

When you look back at the Kannada cinema of the ’70s, you find at least five music composers at the top of their game, delivering a diverse profusion of hit songs. Vijaya Bhaskar (1924-2002), whose birth centenary falls this year, was among the most active composers of the decade. His association with director Puttanna Kanagal, who kept a close eye on what was happening in Kannada literature, gave his songs a noticeable literary quality.

Making his debut with ‘Sri Rama Pooja’ (1955), Vijaya Bhaskar composed music for a staggering 720 films. He scored predominantly for Kannada films, and was invited to score in six other languages as well. Not many are aware of the scale of his work: to this day, he stands out as one of Indian cinema’s most prolific composers. Ilaiyaraaja, from a later generation when more films were produced, has over 1,000 films to his credit. Naushad, the maestro under whom Vijaya Bhaskar worked in Mumbai, scored music for just 62 films in six decades.

‘Santha Thukaram’ (1963), starring Rajkumar, was one of Vijaya Bhaskar’s earliest hits. The song ‘Jayatu jaya Vittala’ remained a listeners’ favourite on radio for decades. Along with ‘Shivappa kayo tande’ from ‘Bedara Kannappa’ (1954, music: R Sudarsanam), it was a favourite among singers even at bus stands and on trains.

A resident of Malleswaram in Bengaluru, Vijaya Bhaskar had learnt the basics of Hindustani music from Pandit Govind Bhave. He also had some grounding in Karnatik music. He was learning the piano, and would walk to M G Road to catch the bands play Western music at the bars.

Like many composers of the time, Vijaya Bhaskar wore formal suits. “That made me look Western. When I got my first film, people in the industry wondered if I would be able to make Indian melodies,” he once told me. That perception changed when he delivered many raga-based songs that worked for the genre of mythological cinema. In ‘Naandi’, a social drama starring Rajkumar and Harini, his songs had conventional melodies, based on ragas and adapted to a sentimental film style. The mellifluous ‘Chandramukhi, pranasakhi’ is based on raga Malkauns, and the brooding ‘Haadondu haaduve’ on raga Megh.

Puttanna Kanagal’s ‘Naagarahaavu’ (1971) made stars of Vishnuvardhan and Ambarish, and presented Vijaya Bhaskar in a totally new light. In his score, he moved away from sweet, raga-based melodies to a more urban cinematic style. ‘Haavina dwesha’, a popular hit from the film, captures the rebellious nature of the protagonist Ramachari. The resounding drum in the background veers away from the beat, reminding you of how reckless he could be.

Rishi Kapoor was the lead when the film was remade in Hindi as ‘Zehreela Insaan’ (1974). R D Burman, who made the music, retained the Kannada tune of ‘Haavina dwesha’, with Shailendar Singh singing what S P Balasubramanyam had sung in Kannada. Something is definitely lost in translation – the Hindi version lacks the original’s edginess.

Vijaya Bhaskar’s Kannada songs travelled to other languages as well. When he scored the music for ‘Thappu Thalangal’ (1978) in Tamil, he took his tune for ‘Karpoorada gombe naanu’, again from ‘Naagarahaavu’, and turned it into ‘Varavendum vazhkayil vasantham’. In many ways, ‘Naagarahaavu’ gave a decisive turn to Vijaya Bhaskar’s style, giving it a cinematic urgency.

His collaboration with Puttanna yielded many hits. In ‘Belli Moda’, when he got S Janaki to sing ‘Moodala maneya’, he slowed down the tempo and avoided the usual tabla-dholak rhythm ensemble to suggest a gentle, sensuous daybreak. “I got the tempo right, and that made all the difference,” he said, when I asked him about the composition.

It is difficult to pick from an oeuvre so vast, but it is important to remember that Vijaya Bhaskar was as comfortable in art-house films as he was in big, commercially mounted films. When P Lankesh made ‘Ellindalo Bandavaru’ (1980), Vijaya Bhaskar used just four instruments to create the songs. ‘Ellidde illi tanka’ and ‘Kempaadavo ella’ are examples of how he could create simple melodies with a bare minimum orchestra. SPB was so impressed by the results that he fell at Vijaya Bhaskar’s feet after the recording, according to his assistant Prakash. Vijaya Bhaskar was also Malayalam auteur Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s favourite composer, and scored music for three of his films.

When Vijaya Bhaskar borrowed from Western music, it was an inspiration and not a copy. An example: he adapted the theme from ‘Come September’ to make ‘Tutiya mele tunta kirunage’, making sure he changed not just the time signature (from 4/4 to 3/4) but also the orchestral arrangement. It is a totally new tune emerging out of an older melody.

When he was at his busiest, Vijaya Bhaskar was vying with a host of composers. If Rajan-Nagendra excelled at breezy, romantic melodies that become runaway hits (‘Naa Ninna Mareyalaare’), G K Venkatesh, assisted by Ilaiyaraaja and L Vaidyanathan, stood out with more stylised and complex arrangements (‘Raja Nanna Raja’). T G Lingappa specialised in mythological, raga-based scores (‘Babruvahana’), while M Ranga Rao produced pleasant melodies with raga overtones (‘Hosa Belaku’). Vijayabhaskar’s songs could be cheerful (‘Snehada kadalalli’, ‘Hoovondu bali bandu’), but his interludes, themes and background scores often pushed boundaries, and were not afraid to sound dissonant when the mood on screen called for such dissonance.

Vijaya Bhaskar, an engineer who switched to music composition, had moved from Chennai to Bengaluru in the 1990s. He is remembered by his peers not just for his excellence as a composer, but also for his work for putting a performing rights (royalty) system in place.