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`Present-day films unable to inspire good songs'

Staff Reporter

M.S. Viswanathan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A good song should have matter, meter and melody, and thankfully, such songs have not disappeared from Malayalam films, the music director M.S. Viswanathan, has said.

He was participating in a `Meet the Press' programme at Press Club here today. "I am still a student of music and am walking the path trodden by great men like V. Dakshinamoorthy, Devarajan Master and Baburaj. I had to struggle hard to reach where I am today," he said.

There was a fall in the quality of film music because situations in present-day films did not inspire good songs, Mr. Viswanathan said.

Asked whether he liked "new songs" and whether they had any quality at all, he broke into a song he composed for the Balachandar film `Sollathaan Ninakkiren.' The opening lines, roughly translated, read: "I want to say something, but I am struggling to speak. Though I have a mouth I cannot get the words to speak... "

Mr. Viswanathan said that he had in the past `lifted' melodies from songs he liked to listen to. A musician should not steal a tune straightaway, but it could become his inspiration.

When he heard Naushad's song, `Too mera chand mein teri chandni... ', he fell in love with the melody of the flute. That became the inspiration for a song of his. "But when I played it to Naushad, he did not recognise it as his melody. So it was not outright stealing", Mr. Viswanathan said.

Mr. Viswanathan said that he had no yearning for the Padma awards. To him, what mattered more was the love and acceptance of his listeners.

He said that two years ago, when he was giving a `kacheri' at a wedding, he got a chit requesting for an old song of his. Afterwards, he met the woman who asked for it. She said she and her husband used to listen to that song every night before retiring to bed.

She told me that for the past three years, she had not listened to that song for her husband had died. She was crying when she said this, Mr. Viswanathan said, adding that "for me, that is recognition enough."

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