S P Balasubrahmanyam

• Birth Date: 04 Jun 1949
• Birth Place: Konaattaampettai, Andhra Pradesh

Artist Information

Music is divine . But the voice that brings the seven notes to life plays a major role in demarcating the ordinary from the ethereal. SP’s voice belongs to this genre.

S. P. Balasubrahmanyam well known in the field of film music over three decades, was born in 1949, June 4th at Konaattaampettai Andhra Pradesh. In the year 1996 while doing his ITI in Engineering he used to sing in Orchestra held at neighbouring Nellore. On one occasion P Kodandapani, Music Director of Telugu was impressed by SP’s singing provided him opportunity to sing for the first time in Telugu film `Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramann’ which was a turning point in his life and later offers poured in from all the languages.Balu’s biggest ever break came with the MGR-starrer `Adimai Penn’ which had music by K V Mahadevan. Music Director M Ranga Rao by providing an opportunity to sing in his film Nakkare Aade Swarga introduced him to Kannada film industry.

S.P.B., though was very young, started singing for many different language films. As he became very busy, at times he used to sing even 17 songs in 12 hours at the recording theatre. At one stage he started acting in films. Gradually the frequency of his acting work increased in a fast pace and he did roles in Tamil and Telugu films. At one stage, he also stepped into the profession music direction and thus has so far composed music for more than 50 films! He who was in the beginning doing playback singing for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada films, latter expanded this to Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, Thulu too!

Balu has accompanied Lata Mangeshkar in her live shows in the US and UK, He had the rare distinction of meeting the US President Bill Clinton along with Lathaji at the White House.

Balu’s wish to become a music director was fullfilled when Dasari Narayana Rao gave him a break as composer in `Kanya-Kumari’. Since then, he has composed the music for about 50 films in Telugu. Balu has also recorded the background score for a Kannada film `Sambandha’ which had no songs. He achieved success as a director to some extent by directing music for films in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada.

He has sung more than 30,000 songs including telugu , tamil, hindi, malyalam ,kannada , tullu. Thus he holds the Guiness Record for the most number of recordings by any single male singer. (the female record is held by Lata Mangeshkar).He has entered the Guiness Book of Records for recording 19 songs at a stretch in a day without any trace of exhaustion. And much before Shankar Mahadevan. he rendered a song in one breath in the Tamil film `Keladi Kanmani’.

Balu has built `Kodandapani Audio Laboratories’ in his mentor’s name in Chennai. It is one of the most modern sound recording theatres in the country, Balu calls it his dream temple. Singing is a passion for this veteran and nobody can do it better. He is also very passionate about cricket and is a keen watcher of the game as and when time permits him to do so.He is happily married to Savithri and has two children, daughter Pallavi and son Charan.