Music And Movies

On Friday, NRR called me to check if I would be interested in attending a Harikatha performance by T N Seshagoplan. I was and we both attended the performance, which was a good one. When I heard Seshagopalan sing, I thought I should write about him in my blog. As the katha progressed and he started quoting from Kamba Ramayanam, I decided that I will write what I know about Kamban. Which, you will discover, is not much. (Did that ever stop a blogger? All that you need to blog is an blog account, internet connection and time. I have all three in abundance this lazy Diwali afternoon.) First thing that impressed me about Kamban's poetry, as I heard TNS recite it, was how wonderfully it captured the particular scene and made it jump right in front of your eyes. The poetry enabled you to visualize it as if you were watching it on a screen. This aspect of Kamban's poetry was first brought to light to me by my mother. She recited parts of Narasimavataram (yes, Narasimavataram in R

It happened accidentally. I came to know of a 2003 Telugu movie called "Shambu" which had music by Illayaraja . I wanted to hear the songs of this movie and so on the Tamil Film Page (yes Tamil Film Page for a Telugu Album) www.tfmpage.com I asked a member called 'Rajasaranam' for the songs of this movie. Now, 'Rajasaranam' is a collector with a difference. He loves sharing his music and he immediately uploaded these songs. When I went to this site I also saw that he had uploaded the songs of an old Telugu film 'Yugandhar' in another folder. I downloaded it as well and when I heard it I was stunned. A bit of background will help in understanding why I was stunned. 'Yugandhar' is a 1979 movie starring N T RamaRao, Jayasudha, Jayamalini and others. It was a remake of the wildly popular Hindi movie 'Don'. This was one of the movie which ensured Amitabh's super stardom. This was remade in both Tamil and Telugu. Tamil movie went by the

My friend Shailesh pointed to this site which has lot of Dikshitar krithis and many of the krithis I had mentioned in my post. Check this out http://sangeethamshare.org /sunil/guruguha/audio/krithis/ He also pointed out that Semmangudi had sung 'Brihadiswaraya' in Sankarabaranam. I have included that in the list. Thanks to Shailesh for his inputs.

When Semmangudi passed away I had posted in Sangeetham detailing the rare krithis of Dikshitar sung by Semmangudi. Unfortunately Sangeetham bulletin board has closed down and I had this bad practice of not saving my own posts !! Here is an attempt to recreate that post. Semmangudi is well known as a person who was responsible for popularizing Swathi Tirunal krithis and rightly so. What I wanted to highlight was the fact that he had also sung many rare Dikshitar krithis. I don't know from whom or where he learnt these from but it is our good fortune that he sang these krithis. I can divide Dikshitar krithis into three. (In fact you can do that for most composers). The first are those krithis which are very popular and you get to hear them at many concerts. Examples are Vatapi Ganapathim, Hariharaputram, Siddi Vinayakam, Meenakshi Memudam Dehi, Akshaya Linga Vibo, Navagraha krithis etc. The second are those krithis sung by a particular school of singers and many serious concert goe

Oscar's for Best Film and Best Direction suddenly threw the focus on Cormac McCarthy. His 'No Country for Old Men' won these honors as well as the Best Supporting Actor honor. Made by Coen Brothers , who also made 'Fargo', this movie was based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. It will be a dark tale, if I know my McCarthy well !! A strong recommendation by David Davidar, editor of Penguin India, in his weekly column in Hindu a few years back was how I got to know about Cormac McCarthy. What caught my fancy was the fact that Davidar mentioned him as a successor to Faulkner. I was naturally curious about McCarthy since Faulkner was one of my favorite authors. I bought and read his 'Orchard Keeper' and then the book recommended by Davidar, 'Blood Meridian'. (It is a pity that Davidar no longer writes that column. I came to know about a lot of good books through that column) I can understand why lot of people compare McCarthy with Faulkne

With the recent death of Sujatha, Tamilians lost one of their most beloved authors. Sujatha, whose real name was Rangarajan, brought a style into Tamil writing which can be variously categorized in modern terminology as 'hip', 'hep', 'cool' etc. Even those who would turn up their noses and say, "I read only English novels", didn't mind reading Sujatha (and letting others know). If it was 'hep' to read him in those days, it was 'cool' to read him in the 21st century. The fluency of thought, which made reading him so much fun, the conciseness of his descriptions, an experimental bent of mind with respect to language, his way with words which sprung up pleasant surprises, a keen sense of observation and an ever present sense of humor contributed to his unique style of writing. Sujatha's prose can be compared to some of S.D.Burman's best tunes. They remain very fresh and contemporary decades after they were written / tuned. Read

As I had promised in my earlier post, we will now talk about a music director of whom it can be said that he crossed all boundaries with utmost ease. Rasayya, aka as Raja, later rechristened as Illayaraja, is a music director who is held in high esteem in all the South Indian languages. Breaking through in Tamil with the refreshing music of 'Annakili', Illayaraja spread his tentacles all over the South and is still giving some amazing melodies in all these languages. In terms of quantity, his output in Kannada was the lowest amongst the four languages. Still, his songs hold a pride of place in the hearts of Kannadigas. A song, 'Nagu Endidhe' by Janaki, was playing one one of the FM Channels as I was driving. I had no clue on the details of this song like the movie, music director etc but I didn't have an iota of doubt about the music director. This wonderful and complex melody had the stamp of Raja written all over it. I went searching for this song without knowin

It was I in a earlier post who wrote about the difficulty of music crossing boundaries and it is going to be me who will now write about music directors who crossed boundaries rather easily !! While I would still argue that musical barriers are more difficult to break compared to other arts, it must be accepted that only in the case of music is language redundant !! If a Japanese person like the same American movie that you do, it will be very difficult to convey what you liked about the movie if there is no common language. In case both of you liked the same English song, you just need to sing it and communication is immediately established. I have seen this when we went to a karaoke in Tokyo along with our Japanese client and sang 'Hotel California' together. None of those who sang that day had any clue on how to sing a song but that didn't stop us enjoying the song together. In that way, music is a language by itself. In India, film music is most common language in the

I strongly hold the view that women have been very instrumental in ensuring the continuing popularity of carnatic music. While the number of male musicians may be more, it is women in the form of mother and sister who have inculcated the taste for carnatic music in many a youngster. I can vouch for my own interest in carnatic music developing from my mother. She used to sing quite well, though she was not formally trained. I used to regularly take her help in identifying ragas and that slowly translated into a mammoth interest in this great art form. I know of many friends who also have a similar experience in their formative years. Another important thing is the number of rare krithis that many women (who are not musicians) know. When my classmate visited me with his family, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a rare Tyagaraja Divyanama sankeetam being sung by his wife. My colleague's wife rendered an outstanding 'Sree Bhargavi' of Dikshitar much to my surprise and awe !!!