Recordings of Telugu songs broadcast by All India Radio
1966 - 1971
Traditional Telugu Mangala Harathis
This site features restored recordings of the broadcasts of Lalita Sangeetham and children's music. They were featured in programs like Ee Maasapu Pata, Janapada Geyalu and Balanandam which were broadcast on All India Radio's Hyderabad A station between 1966 and 1974.
My father, B. N. Murty, had lovingly recorded these songs from the radio, a Murphy valve set, using a Philips open-reel valve tape recorder using Agfa/BASF 1/4" tapes on 6" reels. This tape recorder could record two tracks in each direction and was used in the mono mode, thereby providing 4 tracks in all. There was a button which enabled you to play both tracks at once, but you had to have an external stereo audio amp. The speed was fixed at 3 1/4" i.p.s. The machine featured an aluminum die-cast chassis and used ECC 83 valves in the preamp section and EL 84 valves in the power amp. There was a "Magic Eye' valve to measure and set the levels. The output transformer was high quality and the power amp could belt out about 6W r.m.s. The recording from radio was first done using the dynamic microphone supplied with the tape recorder, but later a direct connection was used, using the speaker terminals on the radio and the 5-pin DIN input on the deck.
I'd transcribed them to cassette in 1985. I used a Sony cassette recorder belonging to Vasu, our neighbor, for this purpose. This was an acoustic recording, so see if you can spot that "warm" tube sound!. The music posted here is extracted from that cassette recording.
Restoration Process
1. Connected the line-out outputs of the cassette deck to the line-in inputs of my sound card using a stereo Y patch cord:2 x RCA to Stereo 1/8" Pin.
2. Fired up AudioGrabber Version 1.7 in Line-in capture mode.
3. Played the tape and started recording on Audiograbber. Audiograbber recorded the music as a wav file.
4. Opened each song file in Goldwave. Edited out loud disturbances. Adjusted volume where required. Trimmed the beginning, end and blank spaces. For some tracks I had to apply sharp band-pass filtering allowing only 100 Hz - 3000 Hz.
5. Converted the wav to mp3 using MusicMatch Jukebox.
The Music
So here is the music for your listening pleasure. I would like to thank Sai Susarla for kindly hosting these songs on his server. These songs are available from his site also, and in case of difficulty with this page, you can play or download them from there. Please contact me with your questions, comments, or suggestions. The songs are in mp3 format [48 kbps mono] and I recommend you use WinAmp to hear these songs.
Alapinchana 869k Ee masapu pata.
Bhagavantha 1.1M One of the tatvams sung by
Chittaranjan
Ethavoyee 1.2M Lalita geetam
Ganagana 1.2M "No man is an island.. entire
of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part
of the main... and therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." This Ee Masapu
Pata echoes these sentiments in great lyrics and music.
Inthi 1.0M Lalita geetam
Sogasu Nee Sommu 328 k Ee masapu pata sung by
Balamurali. Only a fragment here, not the full song.
However a new CD released by HMV has this song.
Kanupinche 993k Lalita geetam
Koti Koti 941k Ee masapu pata
Kshanamaina 1.2M Ee masapu pata by
Balamurali
Mabbulochinai 898k Lalita geetam
Moddabbai 664k Balanandam song. Hear Radio
Annayya [Nyapathi Raghava Rao]'s voice!
Nadi Sundari 562k Lalita geetam
Naganna 1.0M Lalita geetam
Padamulechaalu 1.2M Chittaranjan's Lalita
geetam
Pandu Vennela 1.0M Lalita geetam
Radha Manohara 938k Chittaranjan's tatvam
Sri Rama 537k Chittaranjan's Lalita geetam
Swatantryame 1.1M Lalita geetam
Tatvam 584k Janapadam
Ugave Dolika 1.4M Lalita geetam
Vinthaganu 793k Chittaranjan's tatvam
