This was during the school days. My uncle came home for a small stop and was having snacks. While speaking to my mom, he said, he was on his way to attend Dr. Rajkumar’s concert at “open air theatre” at Manasa Gangothri. He asked if I would join. I said yes and jumped into his black Kinetic Honda – J 800!
In a few minutes, I was at the open air theatre. My uncle had passes for him and his friends. We all sat on the steps of the open air theatre.
In a few minutes Rajkumar arrived on the stage in his own humble style of lifting his joined hands to do “namaskaara” to the people. There were cheers, claps and whistles from the people. The open air theatre was almost full. He appeared in a simple white shirt and white dhothi. Even Rajinikanth appears in his movie promotions in the same simple attire.
He started with a few words, which I surely cannot recall. And then he started with his songs. I remember he sang this song “jenina holeyo , haalina maleyo” composed by Rajan Nagendra. The song line means: The sweet language Kannada is like a river of honey and the rain of milk. There was one particular line where they used “congos” and I used to try recreating that rhythm using the mug inverted in a bucket filled with water.
I was young, but still I could make out that the music was surely live. Those were the days, equipments were at a basic level. And surely his voice was not processed! All natural things. Rajkumar performed so well! I wish I could recall more details of this programme. My memory is limited here.
My uncle and his friends had a great time trying to guess the next song. When there was a break, my uncle guessed that the next song was “maanava moole maamsada tadike” from Bhakta Kumbara. He had taken a bet against his friend for about Rs. 50. Not sure if he won or lost the bet. Whenever a good hit number was sung, they would get up and dance. This became my only memory of seeing Rajkumar from a distance of about 70-100 metres.
Rajkumar was really lucky that he got such beautiful songs in his movies. The first few years of his movie songs were all great due to stalwarts like TG Lingappa, Sathyam, Vijaya Bhaskar, Rajan Nagendra giving music to most of his movies. A crucial turning point happened in the 1970s when Rajkumar was forced to sing a song in the movie Sampattige Sawal (composed by GK Venkatesh). After the release of this song, people went crazy over his voice and he continued singing almost every song he acted in. After 1980s, all of his movies were exclusively produced by his home production and they hired Upendra Kumar or Rajan Nagendra usually. They had an elaborate process to choose the good tunes. Rajkumar himself had a good ear for music and could identify a good tune. His brother Varadaraj and his wife Parvathamma used to sit with the composer. Together they all would choose the best tunes. Some other day, I would be writing about how Rajkumar became a singer. Even his son Shivarajkumar has got an impressive list of songs in his movies.
