12th July 2005

Idlebrain.com asked Keeravani why he always gives his best tunes to K Raghavedra Rao and SS Rajamouli. Keeravani replied saying that these two directors are different from other directors in terms of selection of tunes. He had special praise to SS Rajamouli who did a daring thing of using already used tunes and rejected tunes for Simhadri film. 5 tunes of the 6 songs in Simhadri are either already used or rejected of Keeravani's earlier films. One song is inspired by English tune. Here is the description of each song as narrated to idlebrain.com by MM Keeravani -

1. Ammaina Nannaina: I composed this tune for a director called Vijay Nalla for a film titled 'Missamma' by PRC films banner which was stalled. The lyric was 'Sivudo Sivudu', which was penned by Sirivennela. Later on I used this tune to a film titled Kishkinda Kanda directed by T Prabhakar. Lyric of this song is 'Punjabi paradalo'.

2. Chinnadamme Cheekulu Kavala: This tune was used for a flop film titled 'Samarpana' starring Vinod Kumar in which Y Vijaya acted as villain. Raja produced this film in the direction of Lokchandar. Vennelakanti penned the lyrics and this song was sung by Srinivasa Murthy who later turned into music director with a film titled 'maa aavida meda ottu - mee aavida chala manchidi' (EVV). We used the same tune for this song in Simhadri.

3. Singhamalai: I scored music for Usha Kiron Movies film 'Peoples Encounter' in the direction of Mohan Gandhi. I gave a tune called 'Lal Salaam' for the lyrics penned by Veturi. I used the same tune for Singhamalai.

4. Ne Whistle veste: I scored this tune for NTR's film in VMC banner in the direction of Pawans Sreedhar. It was stalled. Rajamouli came up with another story for the same combination. This tune was completely ready before Rajamouli stepped into the project. Rajamouli liked the tune and took it for Simhadri as it is.

5. Cheema Cheema: I tuned a song called 'Chepa Chepa' for K Raghavendra Rao's film Sahasa Veerudu Sagara Kanya. This song was unused. This song was meant for chepa (fish) character in that film. I would like to give the entire credit of this song to K Raghavendra Rao. Rajamouli okayed this tune as well.

6. Chiraku anaku: I lifted this song from an English song called 'Cotton Eye Joe'. After this tune, I decided not to lift any songs.

What I like in the director Rajamouli are his guts. He does not have any insecurity feeling. He had the guts to select used songs and rejected tunes for Simhadri and made that film a huge blockbuster. I am currently scoring tunes for his forthcoming film Chatrapati.