Revival of Female Solos

Are Malayalam films witnessing a rebirth of female solos through Shreyal Ghosal ? It appears so. We are getting good solo songs by female playback singers these days. And most of them are by Shreya.

For a long time one had felt that music composers had forgotten that women too can sing solos. Or may be the hero-oriented films didn’t have such situations. So it was male solos, duets or group songs and rarely ladies got a chance to croon in films in the last few years. I should say it is no different in Hindi movies

This has been most evident since the year 2000. Just jog your memory and count how many stand out female solos from last decade can you remember? The ones that easily come to mind are the couple by Chitra from the movie `Nandanam’ tuned by the late Ravindran.

It was not like this in Malyalam films. Right from the sixties, P Leela, S Janaki, P Susheela, Madhuri and Vani Jayaram had given us countless memorable solo melodies that have become classics. Curiously, only P Leela among these was a Malayali. In the eighties, the baton was passed on to K S Chitra and later to Sujata. After that there has been a drought.

Not that we don’t have good singers. The likes of Manjari, Gayathri and promising Shweta are comparable with the best in music business. Chitra and Sujata are still capable of rendering good songs. Yet, music composers are reluctant to make them sing solo numbers often. In the eighties and nineties, their singing skills were tested by the difficult songs composed by Ravindran, Johnson, Bombay Ravi, Vidyasagar etc.

In the last couple of years, the arrival of Shreya Ghosal to Malayalam films seems to have restored confidence in music directors to go for female solos. I think the song `Chanthu thottille’ from movie Benaras was the turning point. M Jayachandran has been consistently using Shreya’s voice and now other music composers too have taken a liking for her voice. May be her success in Hindi and other languages influenced the thoughts of music composers here. Her popularity has soared after her songs in Anwar. Last year she sang good solos in Rathinirvedam, Pranayam, Salt and Pepper and Veerputhran.

My earnest hope is that Shreya’s success will rub off on other singers as well. If it happens, then the golden age of female solos will once again return.