Accidentally, Mano was asked to show his singing skills by the composer's assistant who was a good friend of Mano's father. Balasubramanyam who was supposed to sing a song could not show up to the recording studio. Viswanathan was the music composer, it so happened that the original singer S. While in 1977, Mano was shooting for a Telugu film for which the veteran M. Mano has sung almost 5,000 songs for films and private in 15 languages such as Telugu, Tamil, Oriya, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi. He featured as a supporting character in films such as Rangoon Rowdy. Subsequently, he started his film acting career in the late 1970s and acted in about 40 movies as child artist. He soon started taking formal training of carnatic classical music under the vocalist Nedunuri Krishnamurthy. Inspired heavily by his mother, Mano joined the stage theater and played many historical characters which also involved singing live songs in his own voice. His father Rasool, was a musician in the All India Radio, Vijayawada division and his mother Shaheeda, was a popular Stage actress.
Mano was born as Nagoor Babu in Tenali, Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. 2.2 Name change and association with Ilaiyaraaja.
