G Ramanathan

Alias	Ramanathan, GR
Height	5'8"
Weight	68.00 Kgs
Eye Color	Black
Hair Color	Black
Marital Status	Married
City	Chennai

Summary

G. Ramanatha Iyer was a music composer for Tamil movies. He is also known as 'Isai Methai' (Genius of Music) or 'Sangeetha Chakravarthy' (Emperor of Music) and considered to be one of the influential Tamil Music composers to take Carnatic Music to the masses. Notable for his association with M.K.Thyagaraja Bhagavathar.

G.Ramanathan also composed for films of Salem Modern Theatres and Coimbatore Central Studios. His career lasted until his death in 1963. During the 1950s G.Ramanathan's music dominated most of the box office hits of the then leading Tamil Movie stars Shivaji Ganesan and M. G. Ramachandran.

Biography

G. Ramanathan (GR) was born in Bikshandarkoil, Srirangam, Tamil Nadu, India. GR's father was Gobalsamy Iyer who worked as sub-inspector in the Indian Railways. GR studied till standard 5. He was married in 1942 and has 2 sons-one is Sai and the other is Baba naming them reflecting his devout to Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

He joined the Baratha Gana Saba, a drama troupe and played harmonium at the age of 18. Then he joined the famous V.A. Sellappa Drama company, and sang playback and played harmonium. In 1932, he first played musical instrument for a Tamil film called "Kalavarishi" which was produced in Calcutta.

Facts

GR would strive the singers to the excellence. T. M. Soundararajan said that if one could sing to the satisfaction and the tune of GR you could easily sing for the tune of any music director in any part of the world. GR would sing out the songs before recording to guide the singers.

His greatest talent was that he was able to compose tunes suiting the storyline as well as the period of production of the films. He produced a film Puthu Yugam. GR's last film was Deivathin Deivam by K. S. Gopalakrishnan. Unfortunately he died of heart attack after in the midst of composing for the film Arunakirinathar. Then T. R. Papa completed it.

3 Comments