Pawan Kalyan honours folk artiste Mogulaiah of ‘Bheemla Nayak’ title song fame

Telugu film star and Jana Sena Party President Pawan Kalyan handed over a cheque of Rs 2 lakh on Sunday to Telangana folk artiste Darsanam Mogulaiah, who features on the title track of the ‘Power Star’s under-production movie, ‘Bheemla Nayak’. The ‘Bheemla Nayak’ title song was launched on September 2 to coincide with Pawan Kalyan’s 50th birthday. The action thriller film is the official Telugu remake of the Malayalam hit, ‘Ayyappanum Koshiyum’.

Pawan Kalyan also honoured Dasari Ranga, a Telangana folk culture scholar, and handed over a cheque of Rs 50,000 to him.

On Saturday, the actor and mass leader had said financial assistance would be given through the Pawan Kalyan Learning Centre for Human Excellence to the folk singer-performer who has taken the Telugu cinema music scene by storm with the raw brilliance of his voice and the hypnotic strains of the ‘kinnera’ in the title track.

A Jana Sena Party media release said Pawan Kalyan was keen to introduce various traditional arts, especially the folk art forms that are on the verge of extinction, to young people.

The ‘kinnera’ is a stringed instrument that is played by nomadic tribes such as the Dakkali and the Chenchu to accompany the singing of rustic Telugu ballads.

Hailing from the Amrabad reserve forest area in Mahbubnagar district, Mogulaiah is adept at performing on the ‘kinnera’, which he plays as he narrates folk stories in song-form.