A Telangana folk tune has travelled a rather unexpected distance.
The song works because he doesn't try to make its Telangana folk roots more palatable.
The hook, Yeshanagula katta meeda, comes from an older Telangana folk number associated with singer Jangi Reddy Addula, who also sang the Anirudh version.
Beneath all that energy and percussion is a deeply intimate folk song, with the woman addressing her husband with affection, desire and yearning.
Telangana folk music doesn't have to become generic to become popular.
A Telangana folk tune has travelled a rather unexpected distance. From its rooted, rustic origins to a packed concert arena in Dallas, Yeshanagula found itself being performed by Tamil composer Anirudh Ravichander, with actor Nani joining him on stage as thousands of fans danced along. The second single from the Telugu film, The Paradise, was launched live at Anirudh’s Dallas concert on August 28, turning what could have been a routine song launch into a full-blown musical moment.
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What made it even more interesting to watch was who was up there making it happen: a music composer from Tamil Nadu and an actor with roots in Andhra Pradesh, both dancing and driving the crowd wild to a folk song rooted in Telangana, brought into The Paradise by director Srikanth Odela, with new lyrics by Kasarla Shyam, both of whom are from Telangana.
Most people in that crowd, and honestly a fair number of Telugu listeners and younger fans back home too, probably couldn't tell you what half the lyrics mean. Yet everyone was shaking a leg and screaming Yeshanagula, which shows just how far the song's appeal has travelled.
Maybe the easiest way to understand Yeshanagula's pan-India success is to start with composer Anirudh Ravichander. The song works because he doesn't try to make its Telangana folk roots more palatable. He makes them louder. The rhythm hits almost immediately. The percussion is fast, dense and deliberately physical, with layers of programmed beats, synths and keyboards building around the folk melody rather than replacing it. At around 168 BPM (beats per minute), the track barely gives the listener time to stand still. The hook arrives, the beat locks in and the song keeps pushing forward. It feels designed for a crowd before it feels designed for a screen.
The folk number that travels worldwide
That is an interesting choice because Yeshanagula already had a life before The Paradise. The hook, Yeshanagula katta meeda, comes from an older Telangana folk number associated with singer Jangi Reddy Addula, who also sang the Anirudh version. It travelled through village performances, local celebrations and the folk-music circuit before finding newer audiences through YouTube, DJs and short-form videos.
Director Srikanth Odela had reportedly heard the song when he was young and wanted to use it in a film for years. When it finally came into The Paradise, the familiar hook was retained rather than rewritten. Kasarla Shyam wrote new verses around it, giving the song a place within the world of the film.
And Shyam's writing is where Yeshanagula becomes more than a generic folk-style number. The lyrics are packed with words and references that belong specifically to Telangana. Budda parakala koora, for instance, refers to a curry made with the tiny local fish budda paraka. Budimatla Biyyam refers to a variety of rice that may not register with younger listeners today, but surely their parents would.
These aren't decorative rural references. They are pieces of everyday vocabulary and food culture that carry memories of a particular Telangana. I know what budda paraka or Budimatla Biyyam is because my father does, not because I grew up eating it.
This is where it gets more interesting
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That generational gap is part of what makes the lyrics interesting: a mainstream film song is suddenly preserving things that may already be fading from ordinary conversation. And for those who do understand the lyrics, it is harder to overlook how beautifully they capture a woman's longing for her Patela, or husband. Beneath all that energy and percussion is a deeply intimate folk song, with the woman addressing her husband with affection, desire and yearning.
And then there's Nani and Keerthy Suresh, and honestly, watching the two of them dance to this song hits differently if you've followed either of their careers. It's been a while since Dasara, and there's a kind of easy nostalgia in seeing them share a stage again, except this time it's not a tense, brooding film moment, it's just pure joy.
Next is the choreography, which initially received flak online for being simple and generic, but slowly, after many reels appeared from the minute it dropped, made it clear that Aata Sandeep Master's idea feels more like picking moves from life than making a complex dance set.
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It also makes for an unusual combination of collaborators. Odela brings a personal connection to the folk song, while Shyam's lyrics remain firmly rooted in Telangana's linguistic and cultural vocabulary. Anirudh, a composer from Tamil Nadu, gives that material a pan-Indian sonic frame without taking away its folk essence. Nani, who has roots in Andhra Pradesh, fronts a song that is unmistakably Telangana, while Keerthy Suresh from Kerala dances to it for the special number.
The Dallas performance almost feels like a natural extension of that mix: a distinctly Telangana song being carried by artists from different parts of the country and embraced by an audience thousands of kilometres away.
Bigger than what it is
Yeshanagula is also part of a larger movement for Telangana folk music, which has been travelling far beyond its original setting in recent years. Sai Pallavi's Saranga Dariya turned an old Telangana folk song into one of the biggest musical moments of Love Story (2021), while Ramuloo Ramulaa, written by Kasarla Shyam for Allu Arjun's Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo (2020), brought Telangana folk influences into a massive commercial dance number.
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Outside films, songs such as Ramu Rathod's Ranu Bombai Ki Ranu have shown that the appetite for this sound exists even without a star or a film behind it. What has changed is the number of places this music can now travel: from village performances and local singers to YouTube, Reels, cinema and, eventually, audiences thousands of kilometres away.
Telangana folk music doesn't have to become generic to become popular. Yeshanagula works precisely because Anirudh doesn't dilute its identity. He takes the rhythm that was already there and gives it a much bigger room to move in. That is how a song rooted in one corner of Telangana found itself becoming a pan-India sensation.
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