So for probably the first time in Chennai (and I still doubt this was an all– Tamil Nadu phenomenon), Hindi music began to rival Tamil music. So people went to see the star and came away humming the songs, which were probably etched in their minds further by Vividh Bharti. He became an instant heart throb.”Īnd most of Rajesh Khanna’s films had pretty good music. We knew all his songs by heart, even if we didn’t understand the lyrics. We saw Aradhana and he was unlike any other actor we had seen. Senior journalist Sushila Ravindranath said: “At that time, not too many Hindi movies were screened at Chennai’s theatres. (Audio cassettes landed in India only in the late 1970s.)īut there’s another fact, and it’s a bit of a googly: The superstardom of Rajesh Khanna (beginning with Aradhana, which ran for something like a year in Chennai, if not more). Tamil hits were constantly being made (a ton of songs like V Kumar’s Vaazhvil sowbagiyam vandhadhu, GK Venkatesh’s Then sindhudhey vaanam, which is not including MSV’s hits like Yedho oru nadhiyil or Malligai en mannan mayangum or Malare kurinji malare….) Even I, in my childhood, have heard these songs repeatedly on the radio. Like most social/cultural phenomena, the answer is a little complex and involves several variables. So here are some questions: Was Hindi music popular all over Tamil Nadu before Raja came? Or was it just Chennai? So we want them to have performed superhuman acts not just in their field (music, in this case) but in the cultural space of the times.

I don’t doubt where and how this urban myth comes from: we like to deify our deities. And as I began to explore non-MSV 60s/70s Tamil music, my doubts grew further. I have asked many people born in the 1950s and 60s about this - family and others.

So this comes from a recent comment from a reader (as it keeps coming up) that in the 1970s, Tamils were under sway to Hindi film music until the arrival of Ilaiyaraaja brought them back to Tamil music.

Sagara sangamam bgm on keyboard