The 58th National Awards were announced some time back, and here is a quickie on the musical category.
Best Music Director, not very surprisingly, went to Vishal Bhardwaj for that classy score of Ishqiya taking his tally of Best Composer national awards to two. His wife Rekha Bhardwaj won her debut Best Female Playback Singer for Badi Dheere Jali from the same movie. Best Male Playback Singer was awarded to veteran playback singer Suresh Wadkar for the Marathi movie Mee Sindhutai Sapkal. Master lyricist Vairamuthu was presented the top honours in his category for his work in the Tamil movie Thenmerku Paruvakkaatru. The Best Background Score award for the third time too went to a Malayalam movie (1994 – Johnson – Sukritham, 2010 – Ilayaraja – Pazhassi Raja) as Issac Thomas Kottukapally bagged the award for his work in Adaminte Makan Abu, which also won the Best Picture and Best Actor honours. Issac, for the uninitiated, has been working in Malayalam film industry since 2002, giving background scores for some splendid movies including last year’s best movie Kutty Srank. You can see Issac’s Malayalam discography here.
Another music-related award came in the category of Best Art & Culture Film went to the bilingual film made on the cult band Indian Ocean, Leaving Home.