Music And Movies

(Bombay Ravi) Last week, one of the famous music directors, Ravi, passed away. He had two names, Ravi while in Bombay and Bombay Ravi, while in Kerala. I like Bombay Ravi more than the Ravi without the qualifier.  Ravi composed many Hindi songs which are everlasting. Songs such as 'Chaudvin Ka Chand', 'O Meri Zohra Jabeen', 'Baar Baar Dekho', 'Dil Ke Armaan', 'Neele Gagan Pe Tale' : to give a few samples. The saying is, "To the dead we owe only the truth." So let me confess that I have never been a great fan of Ravi's work in Hindi films. Yes, I like some of the songs listed above but overall I have never been too fascinated by the songs he composed in Hindi. Somehow I couldn't relate much to the big hits like 'Neele Gagan Pe' or 'Chalo Ik Baar'. The tunes did not hold much fascination for me and the fact that Mahendar Kapoor was involved made it even more difficult to appreciate the song. In essence, t...

Some carnatic ragas have inherent resistance in adapting to film music. They cling to their carnatic character tightly. Ragas like Begada, Sahana, Bilahari, Kedaragowla, Surati, Anadabhairavi, Bhairavi etc. are examples. (I have spoken about this in a earlier post as well.) Film music has its own set of genius music directors who were able to adapt such 'tough' ragas to film music successfully. We have earlier in this blog discussed Dakshinamurthy Swamy's adaptation of Begada , S.Rajeshwar Rao's adaptation of Bilahari and Illayaraja's take on Todi . Today we will talk about one more such 'tough' raga: Natakurunji. This raga also clings tightly to its carnatic character. The added challenge is the fact that it is easy for this raga to stray from this raga into other ragas under the flimsiest of pretexts. (Whenever I try singing Natakurunji I stray easily into either Shankarabaranam or Neelambari!!! Ofcourse that says more about my singing ability than...