Music And Movies

Today came the news that one of the world's greatest film director had expired on 30th July 2007. Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director, died at the age of 89. My first encounter with a Bergman movie was at Indian Institute of Science (IISc). I was aware, listening to quizzes, about the existence of a director call Ingmar Bergman but had no clue about his works. (The only Bergman whose movies I had watched was Ingrid Bergman, the radiant beauty of such films as 'Casablanca' and 'Notorious'). When the film society at IISc screened Ingmar Begman's 'Magician', I was curious and decided to go and watch the movie. This movie is not considered amongst the best of Bergman's work but I could understand why this director was so highly regarded. Bergman was a discovery for me. The word that instantly came to my mind to describe his style, after watching the movie 'Magician', was 'intensity'. There were scenes of great intensity in this movie, th...

As with people, ragas have their own individuality. Some of the ragas are tradition bound whereas some others are very versatile, adapting themselves to various styles. I will talk about a couple of ragas which exemplify versatility. Kalyani is the only raga from the 'grand' ragas of Carnatic music which has this versatility. The 'grand' ragas that I am referring to are Todi, Sankarabaranam, Kalyani, Kambhoji and Bhairavi, the famous five. Some people may take up the case of Sankarabaranam since it is one the major scales in Western music as well. In cases like Sankarabaranam, the identity of Sankarabaranam changes so much that we are not able to recognize it as Sankarabaranam!!! To take away the carnatic flavour from a ragam like Todi and give a 'lighter' touch is a very difficult thing. I remember reading a review of U.Srinivas's concert by noted Hindu critic N M Narayanan (NMN). In the review he says that U.Srinivas tried his best to break Todi from its c...

Last Saturday I was watching a program on Vijay TV called 'Coffee with Anu' in which Kadri Gopalnath and T H Vinayakaram participated. During the discussion Anu made the comment, "After all music is an universal language". All of us would have heard this many times that music transcends boundaries and music unites people etc etc. This got me thinking and I am putting my thoughts here which may run contrary to what many people say. At one level, the popular one, music does transcend boundaries. A case in point is the Western Pop genre, which has a wide following across the world. Almost everyone across the globe knows about Michael Jackson, has heard or heard of Spice Girls, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Elvis, Elton John and many others. You can see the impact of the pop music on almost all nations. In Japan you have many pop groups, Thailand has them, India has them, Singapore has them and many other countries have pop / rock bands as well. (As in India, you...