Ghantasala's contribution to Telugu Cinema cannot be described in words to make full justice to it. His playback songs with ideal majestic male voice with sweetness and melody added quality to the acting of the heroes like NT Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao. A good share should go to the success of the top heroes in those days to Ghantasala as the melody that was part of his voice enhanced the impression of the heroes acting in those song sequences. He expressed the feelings of love, pity, joy, suffering, happiness, bitterness and piousness in such way that it is not possible to many. That is why he is still remembered after his demise in 1974.
Ghantasala has another reason to be remembered. The Bhagavadgita sang by him is unparallel and still it is played invariably on the occasion of death of a public figure.
Ghantasala as a melody king passed all the generation barriers with his spell bound and magical golden voice. He also composed music to some of the movies. He sang mostly in Telugu but also sang in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu and Hindi. In addition to songs of light music he as a music vidwan could sing classical songs, Telugu verses and traditional styles of singing like Harikadha, Bhamakalapam etc. His last song was sung for the documentary on Bhadrachala Ramadasu Vaibhavam in 1974 from hospital bed.
Ghantasala Venkateswara Rao was born on 4th December 1922 in a village in Gudivada Taluka in Krishna District. He joined freedom movement in 1942 and went to jail to spend 18 months at Bellary jail. It was Samudrala Raghavacharya lyricist who first recognized the richness in his voice and introduced him to the cinema industry and it made changes in the Telugu cinema.
He was honored with Padmashri by the Government of Inida. Ghantasala was the best male playback singer of the films to get the best singer award every year for three decades continuously which is not achieved by any other playback singer in the world. He is the only playback singer in whose memory a postal stamp was released by the Government of India in 2003.
Ghantasala also was the first and only singer sofar allowed to sit and sing at the feet of Lord Venkateswara in Tirumala after Annamacharya in 15th century.
The ability to sing mesmerizingly is treated as a quality of a Gandharva, above human being. The legendary Ghantasala thus was called as Gandharva.
Cine lovers and music lovers remembered Ghantasala today on his birth anniversary.
A small contribution from Andhrawishesh to the great singer Ghantasala who made a void in the playback singing in Telugu that is not filled up fully by any other so far.
-SriJa
