Music And Movies

Admit it. Sometimes in your younger days you had this dream of dancing like a hero, a film hero I mean. In case you lived your younger days in the 70s and 80s, it was actually easy dancing like a hero than it is now. These were the thoughts that passed through my mind when I watched a lovely song from the Telugu film 'Rajkumar'. Wonderful Suddha Saveri based tune of Illayaraja and nice lyrics by Atreya. Do see this song now and then you will understand what I meant by dancing like a hero was easy in those days. Don't worry if you don't understand the language. Just watch the dance 'steps'. (Did you complete watching the song? You need to do that so that what I am going to say now makes some sense to you.) Let us take this hypothetical situation. You are out with your spouse in a hill station like Ooty or Kodai and you find yourself in an isolated place with lot of greenery around, mountains at a distance and a milky white stream flowing next to you. It ...

Long back, when the announcer on the radio said that Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer would be singer, my mother urged me to listen to him. "Hear the way he sings kalpanaswaras ", she said. That was the first time I heard him. I still remember clearly the first concert of T N Seshagopalan and Maharajapuram Santhanam that I attended. I remember watching Bombay Jayashree for the first time on TV and telling my mother, "She sings well." I remember the first time I heard most of the artists, be it MDR , be it KVN or Musiri . But I don't remember when you entered my musical conscience. I don't remember the first time I heard you. I don't remember when you became my favorite. But you had!! Unknown to me, like a gentle breeze that is all pervasive, you had entered my heart. In my journey as a listener, I had many idols in my younger days. As my journey progressed, I had to leave many of them behind. Somewhere along this journey, you had entered and stayed firm...

Nothing like adding a bit of color to pep up proceedings. And if the colors keep changing constantly, you can be assured of audience participation. Ragamalikas perform this function in many of the modern day concerts. As with any classification, we can have different types of classification for ragamalikas. I will categorize them as two and deal with it in two parts. The first type of ragamalikas are the composed ragamalikas. The second type is the one which happens in 'kalpana sangeetham'. We will start with the ragamalikas which are pre-composed. To start right at the beginning, we have the Navaragamalika varnam. As the name indicates the varnam is made up of nine ragas. There is a rendition of this by Trivandrum R S Mani, which is available commercially. I haven't heard any other ragamalika varnam as such and I am not sure if more ragamalika varnams exist. Hear MDR sing this Patnam Subramanya Iyer varnam in his inimitable style. One area where ragamalika comes to the res...

The excitement in the open air Key's High School auditorium was palpable. People had gathered to hear a young kid play a new instrument (new from a Carnatic music point of view), called Mandolin. The kid went by the name of Srinivas. He came, he played and he conquered everyone's heart. Those were the years when many ears heard the instrumentalists play. Those were the golden years for instrumentalists, both in the carnatic music field and in Tamil film music. It was late 1970s and most of 1980s when instrumentalists held sway. Let's have a nostalgic look at those times. U.Srinivas was not the only prodigy who had exceptional skills on an instrument. Before him had come people like Veena Gayathri, on, what else, veena and Ravikiran on Gottuvadyam (which he later renamed as Chitraveena.) It was an exciting era when some experienced stalwarts brushed shoulders with exceptionally gifted youngsters. One one hand was the violin trio of Lalgudi, MSG and T N Krishnan, who between...

(Picture Source: Galatta.com) What happens when a man who thinks he is God is asked to play God by a blind beggar girl towards whom God doesn't even throw a sideward glance? This forms the crux of Bala's "Naan Kadavul". Spoilers ahead: I will be talking about some scenes from the movie. So if you haven't watched the movie yet, watch it and then continue reading. This is a very different movie for Tamil cinema. Not because it shows the plight of beggars or physically handicapped people but for a very different reason. That is what I want to examine through this post. Staying within the ambit of commercial cinema, Bala differs from it by not using some of the age old tools and techniques and in the process creates a refreshingly different movie. So let's start. What is this movie about? Good question. Let me answer in the negative first. It is not about beggars and their plight, it is not about physically and mentally handicapped people, it is not about society...

The cup was made of silver and was shining. The coffee though was not exactly ‘Tanjavur Degree Coffee’. It was good but not great. If you get an image of me sipping coffee leisurely with Semmangudi wipe that image clean off your mind. My idea is to write about the coffee book on Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer which was released last year during his centenary celebrations. I know I am late with the review but as the saying goes “Better late..” and all that. The book is co-authored by V.Subramaniam and Sriram .V. (I guess Sriram put his initial after his name so that people will not mistake him to be a brother of Subramaniam). The title is “Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer – Life & Music”. This is supposed to be a coffee table book and is priced Rs.790/-. Published by East West Books. A CD comes along with the book. Lets have a look at the book . Sriram writes about the Life part of Semmangudi while Subramaniam writes about the Music part. Sriram, as usual, does a good job docum...