GRAMOPHONE RECORDS - MALAYALAM L..Ps.

Those who pursue the hobby of collecting gramophone records will surely admit that Malayalam L.P. records are hard to get nowadays. It appears that Malayalam audio records were released mostly by way of E.P..records and SP(short play) records.which are even now available in antique market and sellers of old items in cities. Music companies, in view of the market limited to only Kerala, had not, probably, released as many Malayalam L.P. records as they did in other languages like Hindi or Tamil.It could also be due to the fact that the development of Malayalam film music industry was a later development compared,e.g., Hindi and by the time it got established, the music cassettes had actually made its dominance. Besides, the high cost of L.P. records and therefore, their slow saleability forced music shops not to stock them in large quantities. Well, the difficulty for us now is that those who are having them are not prepared to part with them!!.

I have a few Malayalam LP records in my collection. While looking at these records I have always wondered how beautifully designed and creative are the paper jackets of some of


them.Two of them stand out. One is the record of film 'SAGARASANGAMAM', directed by Sankarabharanam fame K. Viswanath. The film has music by ILAYARAJA composing a few beautiful semi-classical songs penned by Sreekumaran Thampi and sung by Jayachandran, S.Janaki and S.P. Balasubramaniam and S.P.Shylaja..The front side of the jacket shows the lead artists of the film, Kamal Hasan and Jayapradha, in a captivating dance pose.The other side of the jacket contains the details of the songs and the pencil sketches of two dancing damsels. The record was brought out by a new music company.viz., ACE MUSIC COMPANY,MADRAS.
The second record is of the film 'RANGAM', by I.V.Sasi and M.T. Vasudevan Nair, with music by the maestro K.V.Mahadevan. The film has Kathakali as its background. The front side of the jacket shows the pictures of the lead artists, Shobhana and Mohanlall and the back side shows the details of songs and a rare picture of Mohanlal in the attire of a Kathakali artist. This record was brought out by THARANGINI RECORDS, TRIVANDRUM.

Yes, the jackets of these two records are different because they are not from the familiar HMV mould!



P.S.Click on the photos for zooming them.