Dakshinamurthy Swami - Part 2

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Many of my friends who read the tribute to Dakshinamurthy Swami wrote to saying either that the number of songs included were less or I had missed some important song or the other. It is impossible to list all the great songs that Swami had composed but bowing to my friends demands I am including a few more songs here.

My aim here is to highlight the way Swami used Carnatic ragas in his own unique way.

We start with a very Carnatic raga, Neelambari, which is generally used in 'laali' songs. It is the raga which is used to put the Lord to sleep and Tyagaraja has composed some lovely songs in this raga including 'lali' songs. That is a separate track. Let us look at how wonderfully Dakshinamurthy Swami construct a film song based on Nilambari ragam. Ofcourse, we cannot say that the song sticks to Neelambari all the time but that is OK as far as I am concerned, since the song is a lovely one. Swami uses the raga  to create a tender song. He avoids the standard approach to the raga adopted in Carnatic music.



Now let us take the raga Karaharapriya. Here too you will see that Dakshinamurthy Swami approach it very differently. A standard approach would be like that of 'madhavi ponmayilal' from 'Iru Malaragal'. In that song the approach to Karaharpriya follows the very traditional line. Here Swami takes it in a bit different route, giving us an excellent song.



Let us now see how Swami deals with the same raga in two different ways. 'Ananda Bhairavi' is a 'strong' Carnatic raga but Swami beautifully adapts it to the needs of film music. Here is a very pleasing and energetic Anandha Bhairavi. He sort of paved the way for others to use Ananda Bhairavi in this fashion



As a proof of his versatility, here is another 'Ananda Bhairavi' based song but which sounds so very different.



Here we have a lovely Charukesi based number:



Even the widely popular 'Chandrikaiyil Aliyunnu' is such a different take on Mohanam:



As I said there are many more such songs but time and space constraints force me to stop with this song, which I am posting as a request from many of my friends. 'nalla manam vaazhga'. Swami had the 'nalla manam' to give us lot of lovely songs. May his pugazh vaazgha for a long time.



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