Aemala Manmadharaju Rajah, popularly known as A. M. Rajah, was an Indian playback singer and music director.

Early life

A. M. Rajah was born on 1 July 1929 in Cchamanchipuram,

Chittoor District Chittoor district () is one of the eight districts in the Rayalaseema region of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The district headquarters is located at Chittoor. It has a population of 4,170,468 according to 2011 census of India. It lies in ...

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

. His father died when he was three months old and the family moved to Renukapuram then

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

. He graduated Pachaiyappa's College with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

Early career

Whilst attending university, Rajah wrote, composed, and sang two songs in

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode ...

with the instrumental support of the music director

K. V. Mahadevan Krishnankoil Venkadachalam Mahadevan (14 March 1918 – 21 June 2001) was an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, music producer, and musician known for his works in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada films. He is best known for his contributi ...

for HMV. These songs were broadcast by

All India Radio All or ALL may refer to: Language * All, an indefinite pronoun in English * All, one of the English determiners * Allar language (ISO 639-3 code) * Allative case (abbreviated ALL) Music * All (band), an American punk rock band * ''All'' (All ...

whereupon they caught the attention of S. S. Vasan. After listening to these songs, Vasan, with the approval of his music directors Emani Sankara Sastry, and

Kalki Krishnamurthy , birth_name = Ramasamy Aiyer Krishnamurthy , birth_date = , birth_place = Puthamangalam, near Manalmedu , death_date = , death_place = Chennai, India , occupation = journalist, critic and writer , nationality = Indian , education = H ...

, booked Rajah for his upcoming film, '' Samsaram.'' By this time Rajah was also recording songs for the films ''Rajambal'' and '' Kumaari'' (for

M. G. Ramachandran Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran (17 January 1917 24 December 1987), also popularly known as M.G.R., was an Indian politician, actor, philanthropist, and filmmaker who served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu from 1977 until his death in 1987 ...

). His first Telugu film was ''Adarsham'' (1952). He also acted and sang in '' Pakkinti Ammayi'' (1953). His first song in Malayalam was for ''Lokaneethi'' (1952). In 1953, Rajah and

Jikki Pillavalu Gajapathy Krishnaveni (3 November 1935 – 16 August 2004), more famously known as Jikki, was an Indian playback singer from Andhra Pradesh. She sang around 10,000 songs in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, and Sinhalese langua ...

were chosen by

Shankar Jaikishan Shankar may refer to: People *Shankar (name), including a list of people with the name * Sankar (writer) (Mani Shankar Mukherjee), Bengali writer * L. Shankar, Indian violinist * S. Shankar, Indian film director commonly credited as Shankar *Sanka ...

and

Raj Kapoor Raj Kapoor (pronunciation: �aːd͡ʒ kəpuːɾ born Shrishti Nath Kapoor; also known as Ranbir Raj Kapoor; 14 December 1924 2 June 1988) was an Indian actor, film director and producer, who worked in Hindi cinema. He is considered one of th ...

for the multilingual film ''Aah''. Rajah also sang in a few Sinhala films produced in Chennai and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

with Jikki and K. Jamuna Rani. Rajah's exit from the film world was controversial. He fell out with a number of music composers and developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. He was direct and had his own strong opinions about how songs must be composed and sung. Mahadevan was the first to openly drop him after recording the song "Kayile Inippathenna, Kaniyanal Kasappathenna", which was followed by a heated argument on the set of ''Manamulla Maru Tharam'' (1958). It was also known in the cinema circles that

M. S. Viswanathan Manayangath Subramanian Viswanathan (24 June 1928 – 14 July 2015), also known as M.S.V., was an Indian music director, singer and actor who predominantly worked in Tamil film industry. He was popularly known as ''Mellisai Mannar''. He compose ...

always resisted using Rajah in his films after their collaboration in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

. Film critics noted that he was his own worst enemy. However, he continued to sing for Malayalam films longer where particularly

G. Devarajan Paravoor Govindan Devarajan (1927–2006), popularly known as G. Devarajan or Devarajan master, was an Indian music composer and Carnatic singer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Indian film music. He sco ...

was able to coax Rajah to sing from time to time. Rajah however continued to reside in Chennai. It is noteworthy that

mentioned in his book that not only Rajah was an excellent melodious singer, but also of a straightforward character often misunderstood. Most composers called him an arrogant cynic. Rajah made a comeback in the 1970s through composers

V. Kumar V. Kumar ( ta, வரதராஜுலு குமார், ) (28 July 1934 – 7 January 1996) was a yesteryear Tamil cinema music director, born in Chennai, Tamilnadu on 28 July 1934 to Varadharajulu and Dhanabhakiyam couple, in July 1969 ...

and

Shankar–Ganesh Shankar–Ganesh is an Indian music director duo who has worked on Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada movies for around 50 years. Career They started as assistants to Tamil music composers M. S. Viswanathan and T. K. Ramamoorthy in 1964 an ...

, and the songs were amongst the hits of the respective years.

Music composer

Rajah was booked early in his cinema life as one of the music composers, but he passed the opportunity to Viswanathan. Rajah's debut as music composer was for '' Sobha'' (1958). It was

C. V. Sridhar Chitthamoor Vijayaraghavalu Sridhar (22 July 1933 – 20 October 2008) was an Indian screenwriter and film director. He has directed nearly 60 films in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu Languages. Early life Sridhar hailed from Chitthamur, a villa ...

who gave his friend the second break to be a music director, fulfilling his promise that the day he directed his first film, Rajah would be its music director. The film was '' Kalyana Parisu'' (1959). Rajah received the Madras Film Fans Association award of Best Music Director in 1959 for this film. In the same year he composed music for ''Anbukkor Anni'' (1958). Sridhar and Rajah thereafter collaborated on '' Vidivelli'' (1960) and '' Then Nilavu'' (1961). They separated after the film was completed and Rajah refused to do the background music, but eventually did under pressure from mutual friends; Sridhar wanted to go back to Rajah for ''Nenjil Or Alayam'' (1962), but he refused. He then composed music for ''Aadi Perukku'' (1962). In the 1970s, he composed music for films ''Amma Enna Stree''(Malayalam-1970), ''Veetu Mapillai'' (Tamil-1973) and ''Enakkoru Magan Pirappan'' (Tamil-1975).

Death

On the 8th of April, 1989, Rajah was killed in a train accident at Valliyur. In transit to perform at a concert in Kanyakumari district temple, Rajah reportedly attempted to board a moving train, whereupon he tripped and fell onto the tracks. He was killed instantly.

Discography

References

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rajah, AM 1929 births 1989 deaths Musicians from Andhra Pradesh People from Chittoor district 20th-century Indian singers Indian male playback singers Telugu playback singers Tamil playback singers Malayalam playback singers Kannada playback singers Indian male composers 20th-century Indian male singers