All about Salil-da. O Udaala Saraala.. and more..

"O uDaala Saraala.. ADisi pADisi..." is a classic 70s melody by the veteran music director: Salil choudhury.
In our discussion forums at kannadaaudio.com, one of our regular members jagruti happened to mention this song, in the now longest running thread "Duet antakshari", and that triggered a search on salilda, and his melodies.

Found www.salilda.com, the world of salil Choudhury, an excellent website with abundant info on S-C's works in many indian languages. Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Assamese. He is the only M-D who has composed in these many languages with such diversity and proved that music has no barrier.

Thanks to Gautam's effort in preparing and maintaining this site. I was thrilled to listened to this classic melody and many rare gems on this site.

The song O udaala.. saraala, sung by S Janaki and towards the end by "Mohan" (never heard his name), shows Salil-da's versatility and the way he can adapt to any language and song situation. It was from the movie "Onde roopa eraDu guNa" featuring Vishnuvardhan and Jayanti in the lead roles. The song is like an item song but a classic one (unlike the ones churned out these days), with the evergreen "Bharati".

Salil-da is no more with us. I didn't know abt it until I saw this site :( , but his music is eternal. He worked for four Kannada films in the 70s and produced some rarest gems including:

"Dooradinda bandanta sundaraanga jANa" from the movie Samshaya Phala. This is the best cabaret ever, sung by LR Eswari, has excellent rock and roll style guitar music. It is still popular in orchestra's and is frequently played on A-I-R.

"Sanje tangaaLi maisOkalu" - from Kokila. A highly emotional solo number rendered in her classic style by S Janaki. Very less use of instruments and the emotion of the character is superbly conveyed in the music and the singing. hats off to S-C and S-J. It is hard to find these rare gems, A-I-R plays this occasionally, you might be able to catch it, if you are lucky. This is the first movie of the famous director "Balu Mahendra". Had Kamal hassan, Shobha (the tragedy queen of late 70s-early 80s) and Roja Ramani in the lead roles. One of the few Kamal movies in Kannada. "Mohan" who played Kamal's friend's role was later known in most movies as "Kokila"Mohan. This movie was re-made in Hindi in the 90s by Balu M, and had Ramesh Aravind, Revati, Heera in lead roles.

Naane Raja Ee Oorige (the pied piper and the rats)
Jo Jo laali naa haaDuve
Dehake usire sadaa bhaara
All great melodies from the movie Chinna ninna muddaaDuve.
I must say. the songs of the rats and pied piper is easily the best children's song ever. Sadly kids are ignored big-time these days in Indian films :(
the lullaby Jojo laali by Yesudas and also by S-J and Antara chaudhry(Salilda's daughter) is one of the best lullabies in film music. Every child in a kannada speaking family, would have probably slept to this song.