Social Songs

Whenever the thought of a festival or function day came in the mind, many memories related to the function or the festival also coming prominently along with the thoughts.

This is suitable for all the functions and festivals, even they are political, cultural or anything.

All the functions and festivals had a common need throughout the world. That is ‘megaphone’! (These are called as loud speakers and they developed to digital speakers today. And here it means the total electronic system consist of music players, mice etc.) Nobody can image a function without a megaphone in this modern world. The speech of the leaders or orators, cultural events, various announcements etc are reaching the audience only through the megaphone.

In these objectives, the songs had a significant place in our nation. In our culture, we are celebrating everything from birth of a child to the funeral of a man with songs. In the past years, songs are sung by the singers directly on the stage in the functions. The voice of those singers can reach only a small area very nearby the stage. That reach is become very broad today by using the megaphone.

When the megaphone became very popular and easily accessible for everyone, even in the villages, it became an integral part of all festivals. Even the main objective of the function didn’t need a song, everyone started to use the songs through megaphones. Even in temples, songs are played through the megaphones. 

Before starting the main program, the songs are very much needed to announce the function to the areas around the function centre. Usually film songs are played in those situations.

Film songs consist of many type songs. These songs are used to play in general functions like marriage etc. But songs with a message are usually used mostly in the public gathering like political meetings. These social songs have a significant impact on the life of the people.

The popular song of MGR can be called as the best example for the social song. Of course, many other songs with social message are there in the film history, songs of MGR and Kannadasan stood different from all those songs.

Even though MGR songs were written by other lyricists like Pattukkottai Kalyanasundaram and Vaali, they are usually known as MGR songs. MGR is the only and foremost star used the power of songs to attract the audience and spread the messages through the songs. Kannadasan used to express his ideas and opinions in his songs. But the desperation, defeat, pain and the philosophy raised from those feelings are prominent in his social songs. MGR used to express his social thoughts and political views in his songs.

The social songs of MGR make him unique in film and political world. And nobody can deny that those songs helped him to become the chief minister of Tamilnadu.

And these social songs make him a long living person in the mind of people, even after his demise many years ago.