Kamal Hassan’s “Uthama Villain” raised sky-high expectations as the Telugu audio got launched last Sunday. It was entertainment to see Kamal Hassan’s spectacular entry splitting at the centre of curtains after amplifying late K Balachander’s memorable tribute to the great actor. SPB’s lyrical affections on Kamal elevated the mood to infinite nostalgia. I had followed Kamal Hassan’s films since childhood and despite the fact that he didn’t have the mass-hysterical following of Rajinikanth, he had his own indomitable footprint in South and North Cinema (the few Hindi films he starred in). But this is not the subject today. I wanted to write about the audio of “Uthama Villain” and make a fleeting mention of Kamal’s taste for high-caliber, different sounding music.
“Uthama Villain” has music by Ghibran, the most happening music composer in Tamil and Telugu cinema today. Not the first time he scored music for Kamal - he did for “Vishwaroopam-2” and “Paapanashanam” earlier. Before that Kamal rotated many music directors - DeviSriPrasad, Himesh Reshmiya, Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Jayachandran, Ramesh Vinayakam and even his daughter Shruti Hassan for one of the films which came in Telugu (“Eenadu”). What I find intriguing is that but for the great Ilaiyaraja and the inimitable MS Vishwanathan, Kamal never really settled with any music composer throughout his career post that phase of MSV-IR. If you take out MSV and Ilaiyaraja’s overarching influence on his films, his sense of sound and music scores that provided such rich variety for the maestro to compose for almost 130 films or more, Kamal remained restless for the last decade hunting for the perfect composer after Raja. He tried AR Rahman twice (“Indian” and “Tenali”), Shankar Ehsan Loy twice, Deva twice, Vidyasagar and Harris Jayaraj once (or twice) but never repeated them afterwards. I read in some of his interviews too that he never liked the approaches of some of the gifted composers like Rahman or Vidyasagar despite getting good output from them. He was the only one who never got carried away by the Oscar-wins and the global adulations greeting Rahman; Rajinikanth on the other hand continues to enlist ARR for taking bigger bites into overseas distribution markets - having Rahman on your side as music composer is a sure-fire passport to box-office success and global appeal. The only person from Tollywood who got calls from Kamal for OST few times has been DSP - but that maybe more than just because DSP is an open admirer of Ilaiyaraja. DSP’s remixing and rerecording stood out in most of his movies thanks to his energy and relentless handwork. Surprisingly, Mani Sharma - the best RR specialist in Tollywood never got a call from Kamal. Kamal Hassan movies, if one observes, never needed an over-melodious music director like Vidyasagar or Harris Jayaraj to imaging things that were never intended as per the actor-director's film grammar. You just had to score one or two melody songs and some minimalistic but thoroughly realistic portrayal. But that one song is remembered forever in his films. This was the easy part that most of his music composers missed except Ilaiyaraja - thats how their chemistry endured for film-buffs because it left a rich legacy that will be studied by musicologists and music fans for many decades.
With Ilaiyaraja, Kamal’s last film was “Mumbai Express” that was in 2005. In ten years, Kamal never worked with the Maestro and fans are waiting when the two will create magic again. Over the last decade, Ilaiyaraja has matured beyond what Kamal Hassan may have expected - Raja worked with almost all the new kids on the block who are directing Tamil films with dangerous themes and vivacious outputs - Bala, Myskin, Balki (in Hindi) ,Gautham Menon and many others who are hailed as the new trailblazers leaving the likes of ManiRatnam and old stalwarts to bite dust. Of course, Mani Ratnam himself never worked with Ilaiyaraja after parting ways bitterly before Rahman burst at the world stage. But that’s another matter. In the last ten years, there was no dearth of new music composers in Tamil and Kamal tried most of them while Ilaiyaraja exerted himself with different genre films ranging from biopics like “Bharati” to “Pandavas” to “Ajanthaa”. I sense somewhere we are about to see the coming together of the original Maestro and the actor extraordinaire in the coming years because the old wine has matured to give us richer, orchestral music and Kamal’s plots are becoming more complicated and multi-dimensional - even if they appear highly contrived. The budgets have also gone up for Ilaiyaraja, I am told, making it easy to assemble a 400 member orchestra from London or Budapest to configure a particular symphony.
With that background, I am relieved that Gibran’s latest composition for UV is spectacular and worthy of the high standards set by Kamal’s films. The original Tamil score has 17 numbers with elaborate interludes, situations and symphonies as if you are listening to a Hollywood musical OST. The Telugu version is cut down to 9 numbers and as expected the audiences on the day of the audio release lapped up the two songs - “Kaanuke Bondu Malli” and “Lovee Lovee Single KissKe Lovaa” for the outrageous melody and the stretch in the songs. “Kaanuke..” has an extra lilt and a sensuousness that is rarely captured in today’s songs where the male singer and the female singer sing in their own time and the original purpose of duet is lost in remixing. You can hear the O-shouts and murmers of the male singer and the seducing spell of the heroine Puja Kumar in the song very well. Ghibran gave a completely different score in UV compared to the techno-thrills and fast-tempos seen in some of his latest films like “Jil” or “Run Raja Run”. Obviously, Kamal’s kitaab for Gibran both before and during the audio launch settles it that he is the right choice for the film which has a 7th Century theatrical plot intermixed with contemporary settings. I always love the background scores segued with the songs in the audio because it is such a treat for music lovers - don’t we miss all of that for Ilaiyaraja whose BGMs float on the youtube channel with an ever-swelling following. If only music directors take note of this, they can raise the standards for audio and make the audiences stand up to rich music -of which many are capable of. The last time, a catalogue of this length - which includes songs and instrumental versions of the various scenes - came was for “Mask”(“Mugamoodi” in Tamil). Music by K -that was from a different planet. And this album “Uthama Villain” belongs to the same class - Ghibran must take a bow. Can’t wait for the movie.
#UthamaVillain #Ghibran #KamalHassan #Ilaiyaraja #ARRahman #Vidyasagar #TamilMusic #TamilMusicComposers #TamilFilmComposers #HarrisJayaraj #Kollywood
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