Music maestros promise exciting times ahead

They may not have been regular fixtures in Telugu cinema, wielding the baton for the local fans of theirs. In fact, the combined output of theirs, over two decades, would barely touch twenty films in Tollywood.

Yet from being preferred for high-profile launches of celebrity children to being associated with mega budget productions, the work of the established music directors like A R Rahman, Harris Jayaraj and Sandeep Chowta are expected to be lapped up in the months ahead.

Harris Jayaraj’s songs and musical score are keenly awaited as ‘Spyder’, the Mahesh Babu bi-lingual starrer is expected to be released on September 27. Helmed by director A R Murugadoss, who has been favouring Jayaraj over the years, the film is expected to open a new market in Tamil for the Prince, whose initial PR exercises in Chennai have been well-accepted, as he is considered a local boy.

October is expected to see Puri Jagannadh requisitioning the services of Sandeep Chowta for the high voltage launch of his son’s film, marking his return to Telugu cinema after a gap of seven years. Though not ranked in the same category as the Tamil music directors, Chowta has been regularly involved in Hindi films for background scores.

Only time will tell whether A R Rahman’s music will make the fans comment it as ‘Adhirindhi’, the dubbed venture of Vijay, likely to be a Diwali release in October. Other than this, the ‘Mozart of Madras’ has three projects lined up over the next two years which is sure to be received well by his eager fans round the world.

Showman Shankar is likely to release 2.0 in January next year, which is already in the news for its sizzling star cast including ‘Thalaivar’ Rajinikanth matching his skills with Akshay Kumar, the hero-turned-villain for this venture. Rahman fans still recollect his uniquely appealing compositions in the 2010 release Robot, both for its orchestration and the manner in which it was picturised. The multi-lingual ‘ Sanghamitra’ too is to be a Rahman project, likely to be released sometime next year.

In the Telugu film circles, he being cherry picked for the 2019 release Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy has already raised expectations for the Chiranjeevi historical, which has a host of luminaries, from Amitabh Bachchan to Nayantara already approved. Malayalam cinema too has wanted him to score music for the 2020 release, Randamoozham, supposedly a Rs 1000-crore project, the costliest non-Hindi film in Indian cinema as of now. The southern film industries cannot seem to have enough of him, it seems.

Recently, Telugu cinema has been viewed with awe for the massive budget with which it produced the two versions of ‘Baahubali’. It has been garnering a decent rate for dubbing rights of many of its films starring from Chiranjeevi to Ravi Teja, quite popular in the upcountry market in UP and Bihar. With these super-duper bonanzas awaiting to hit the silver screens, it promises to be relentless excitement for the average Telugu film viewer for a long time.