Not too long ago, when I would take my morning office shuttle to Electronics city, the radio would blurt out hindi song after hindi song. There was no point changing the frequency, almost all stations had English speaking RJ’s playing non-kannada songs. Once in a while they would have a dedicated show for Kannada in which they would air the new kannada songs, and all this in the capital of Karnataka. The land of the Kannadigas.
But now, even Radio City, the pioneer of FM channels in Bangalore, which concentrated on bollywood songs most of the time, saw that it was nowhere in the listeners count and had to change its slogan to “Sikkabatte Kannada, swalpa hindi” (Lots of kannada with a little bit of hindi). This is clear sign of the change in dynamics of movie-dom and the ascent of the Kannada film industry.
A lot of credit for this has to deservedly go to “Mungaaru Male” which brought back memories of the time when kannada music ruled the southern movie industry. My aunt who is a Telugu would always tell me that ‘Kannada songs were always the best melodies and had awesome lyrics, but had recently lost it’ . She being a musician knew the nuances and I would take her word for it. The blockbuster Mungaaru Male which earned nearly 75crores spurned life into a dead industry and gave it aspiration to reach back the glory days of the 60’s and 70’s.
The first talkie movie in Kannada cinema was “Sati Sulochana” way back in 1934. We have not looked back since then. The Gubbi Veerana company dominated the industry in its early period. Theatre Personalities like H.L.N Simha( the man who gave chance to Annavaru in Bedara Kannappa) , Subbaiah Naidu were the stars of that era.
In 1954, Bedara Kannappa released. It starred a man who would rule the kannada film industry for 50 years. The legend of Rajkumar,the pride of the Kannadigas was born then. Rajkumar or Annavaru(elder brother) as he is respectfully called, went onto act in over 206 movies. He is known for socially relevant themes in his movies. He is easily the highest grossing star in the history of kannada cinema and is a dadasaheb phalke awardee. He was also a versatile singer.
His partnership in movies with Jayanthi,Leelavathi,Narasimharaju, Balakrishna, Ashwath,Vajramuni etc brought a golden age in Kannada cinema. Some of his most memorable roles includes movies such as “Bhakta Kanakadasa” ,”Ranadheera Kanteerava”, “Satya Harishchandra”, “Jedara Bale”, “Rowdi Ranganna” ,Sri KrishnaDevaraya”, “Kasthuri Nivasa” , ” Saakshatkara” ,” Banagarada Manushya” , ” Gandhada Gudi” ,”Mayura”, “Premada Kanike” ,”Babruvaahana”, “Hosabeluku”, “Jeevana Chaitra”, “Aakasmika” etc.
With the 70’s emerged other stars like Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, Anant nag, Shankar nag etc. Kannada industry later lost a gem at a particularly bad time. Shankar nag known as a master technician and actor who directed movies like “Accident”,”Minchina ota” and serials like the wonderful “Malgudi Days” died in an accident. I am sure if he was alive the Kannada industry would have scaled higher peaks.
The 70’s and 80’s also saw the rise of good directors like Puttana Kanagal, Girish karnad ,B.V Karanth, Girish Kasaravalli, T.S. Nagabharana in the kannada industry. Sadly after a brief period where Ravichandran,Shivanna and Jaggesh movies were good hits, the kannada industry hit a rot in the 90’s. This was because of no single reason. A Combination of bad scripts, concentrating on remakes, fewer talented music directors and the growth of other language industries meant that by 2005 we were in the dumps.
But I see a revival now. Duniya,Cyanide, A Dinagalu,Gaalipata,Milana have been some of the big hits in recent times. I hope many more are yet to come. Directors like Yograj Bhat, AMR Ramesh, Sudeep,Soori and even the older directors are not sticking to age old themes and are directing stories relevant to today’s world. Music as we hear now in almost all the FM’s has become so much more better. Better melodies, lyrics and racy music have become the order of the day.
I also see young kannadigas who would not throng theatres before, making a beeline for the new releases. All this caters well to the kannada film industry. We kannadigas have to remember that movies are a very important medium of spreading our culture. We have seen that because of the slump in the level of the kannada movies, people leaving in the borders with andhra and tamil nadu started watching only their movies. This has created a bigger market for their movies and also a spread of their culture. We need to support kannada movies by seeing them in theatres. The filmdom people will invest the money they make into making better movies and showcasing karnataka better. So I call upon all people to watch kannada movies.
A song from Annavaru’s movie “Premada Kanike” , ” Baanigondu yelle yellide ” is my favorite song. It has the most wonderful lyrics. Can anyone tell me which car annavaru is driving ? 
see the video below….
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI9_wyK1M9Y
And for the newbies,another of my favorite new songs from Milana “Male ninthu hoda mele”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkEEQEXb27w
Hi good writeup but you are forgetting Shivarajkumar and his films like Om, Janumadha Jodi and Jogi whose songs were immensely popular.
Hear Lahari moha lahari from Madesha by Mano murthy..You will be mesmerized.
Times are changing. German in Germany, French in France, Japanese in Japan, Chinese in China, Hebrew in Israel and only Kannada in Karnataka.
The Central Governments imposition of Hindi in Governance, in education in all possible fields you can think of, is highly infuriating the public anger against Hindia. All jobs in Bengaluru are taken by Hindians, Railway jobs in Karnataka is taken by Hindians. To get into Central Govt. you should be knowing Hindi.
In Karnataka, All Muslims dont speak Urdu/Hindi and all christians dont speak English. The Central Government will not understand this and they will try to make Bengaluru as Mumbai. In the name of Cosmopolitan, all Hindians are coming and settling down here in Bengaluru. With constitutional support they never utter a Kannada word, they are rude and misbehaved. For their kids they select Central CBSC/ICSC/Govt/private schools where there is no sign of Kannada being thought. Karnataka is losing jobs to outsiders.
FM radio is a small success story & we have a long way to go and stress the need for usage of Kannada in Karnataka.
Good review .. And a good call .. eddeLu kannadiga ..
Good one ,,, Kannada ge jai ,,, Kannada will grow and be more popular than other south indian languages
i love this song.This song is top of the world.
the best!!
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