Veteran singer Sreenivas to be feted in Dharwad

DHARWAD:For the fans of noted playback singer P B Sreenivas (popular as PBS), here is achance to see him in person and listen to his voice live. On Sunday morning, PBSwill be present at Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha and receive felicitations fromthe people of this cultural capital. Courtesy Saptagiri Creations,PBS will be honoured at a function to be held at 9.30 am. The felicitation willbe followed by vocal recital by Nagarajrao Havaldar and his son Omkarnath.Writer Mohan Nagammanavar will be the chief guest. Famed novelist VeenaShanteshwar will preside.Prativadi Bhayankara Sreenivas was born to couplePhanindra Swamy and Seshagiriamma on September 22, 1930, at Kakinada in AndhraPradesh. He obtained his BCom from AP.PBS is fluent in eightlanguages (Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Urdu, English and Sanskrit)and has penned several ghazals in Telugu. Sreenivas sang duets and triplets withGeeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum and Jikki apart from leading chorus songs. He wasintroduced in Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu simultaneously in the movie `JathakaPhala' (`Jathakam') by R Nagendra Rao.His first solo hit came in themovie `Prema Pasam' in which he also sang a duet with P Susheela. In `PavaMannippu', Sreenivas sang `Kalangalil Aval Vasantham' written by Kannadasan andset to the tune by the composer duo Viswanathan-Ramamurthy. The film `AduthaVeettuppen' of Anjali Pictures carried some of his songs. Sreenivas has alsosung with Susheela, S Janaki, Banumathi and some north Indiansingers.His devotional songs include `Sharadha Bhujanga Stothram',`Sri Venkateswara Suprabhatham', `Mukunda Mala', `Shri Mallikarjuna Stotram' andcompositions of Purandara Dasa.He has headed many music-relatedorganizations, being the president of Iyal Isai NatakaMandram.Sreenivas had been the voice of Kannada matinee idolRajkumar for several decades till the actor started singing for himself.However, Rajkumar thought the voice of Shrinivas suited him. He used to call PBSas `shaareera' (voice) while he referred to himself as `sharira'(body).Although Rajkumar's singing is greatly appreciated, his fansof the days of black-and-white movies (of 1960s and 1970s) swear by the factthat his true identity was Srinivas.