Singer Priyadarshini documents 100 years of film music
The Hindu
The first Indian playback singer to present the longest doctoral thesis on ‘100 years of film music’, also considered a sourcebook for the film music study
Priyadarshini’s playback career began in 2004 with the Tamil film Kadhal Dot Com and was followed by opportunities to sing in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam film industries. A B Tech graduate in Electrical and Electronics from Nanyang University in Singapore, Priyadarshini’s interests in music and academics ran parallel. Her 5-year long research on film music earned her a doctorate from the Mysore University at its 101st convocation recently.
While pursuing MA in music in Chennai, she realised there are numerous books on Indian inema, but only a handful on film music. On what triggered her PhD, Priyadarshini says, “As a playback singer, I did not want to limit myself to only sing and perform but also to contribute to the film industry by creating an indigenous resource to preserve, create awareness of Indian film music’s legacy.”
Under the guidance of C.A. Sreedhara of the Mysore University, Priyadarshini pursued her research study from the period 1917-2020 in the Tamil industry and 1931-2020 in the Kannada film Industry.