Birth name Sivasankaran Name T. Pappa Died October 15, 2004 | Instruments Violin Role Music Director Movies Iravum Pagalum | |
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Music director Similar People Bhanumathi Ramakrishna, N S Krishnan, Kannadasan, Savitri, Karunanidhi | ||
T. R. Pappa Hits| Video Song Collection|Pyramid MusicVideo
Thiruthuraipoondi Radhakrishnan Pappa (Tamil: டி. ஆர். பாப்பா; 1923–2004) was a music director of Tamil, Telugu and Sinhalese movies. He was born in 1923 at Thiruthuraipoondi, Madras Presidency, British India.
Contents
Early life
Papa's real name is Sivasankaran, who is from a lineage of musical family. He started training on the violin from early childhood.
Career
Papa started playing the violin in Modern Theatres and Jupiter Pictures. In the late 40s, Papa and T. K. Ramamoorthy were the highest paid violinists for the movies and were always in demand.
Papa became music director for Malayalam film Athmasanthi (1952). The chance was given to him by Joseph Thaliyath Jr of Citadel Film Corporation. This film is dubbed in Tamil under the same title.
Then onwards, Papa went on to compose for many of Citadel films such as Mallika, Vijayapuri Veeran, Vilakketriyaval, Iravum Pagalum and Kadhal Paduthum Paadu.
Papa also composed music for many Sinhalese films. The song Siriyame Sara, sung by H. R. Jothipala is one of the popular hits in Sinhalese.
He worked with singers like T. M. Soundararajan, A. M. Rajah, Seerkazhi Govindarajan, Thiruchi Loganathan, C. S. Jayaraman, S. C. Krishnan, A. L. Raghavan, M. L. Vasanthakumari, P. Leela, Jikki, T. V. Rathinam, A. P. Komala, K. Jamuna Rani, P. Suseela, A. G. Rathnamala, T. S. Bagavathi, Soolamangalam Rajalakshmi, A. Nithyakala, S. Janaki, L. R. Eswari, S. P. Balasubrahmaniam, B. S. Sasirekha, S. P. Sailaja.
The singing actors K. R. Ramaswamy, T. R. Rajakumari, P. Bhanumathi, N. S. Krishnan, T. A. Madhuram and J. P. Chandrababu also sang memorable songs under his compositions.
As a Nilaya Vidwan of AIR from 1946, Papa accompanied the violin for many great classical vocalists. He composed music for many wonderful devotional albums with Seerkazhi Govindarajan where the song Chinnanjiru Penn Pole dedicated to the Goddess Abirami is notable. Papa scored music for the album Abirami Andhaadhi. Papa has served as the Principal of Madras Music College.
T. R. Ramanna and Papa were classmates in Thanjavur. T. R. Ramanna was in the midst of the making of Arunagirinathar when the music director G. Ramanathan fell ill. Papa was called upon to complete the rest of the songs. T. R. Ramana again engaged Papa for his movies in the early 1970s.
Tamil Isai Sangam conferred the title Isai Perarignar (Great Scholar of Music) on him.
Works
Some of the notable music compositions:
Filmography
Tamil films: