Music And Movies

'vasantha panjami naalil' from 'Bhargavi Nilayam', the Baburaj Master's beauty, is a favorite of mine. One day while listening to this song on youtube I saw a comment which said that this song was inspired by a Marathi song, 'ek vaar panka varuni'. So I immediately searched for that song and I could see why the poster felt that way. While Baburaj's song is a classic in its own right, the Marathi song is an outstanding one as well. Youtube says the music is by Vasant Pawar and Sudhir Phadke. I am unable to get exactly who composed the song but the singer is undoubtedly Sudhir Phadke. The song can be classified in the 'soft melody' category and Sudhir Phadke sings it lovingly. His voices suits the overall tenor of the song. The way Kalyani is used in this song is delicious. I was hooked to this song the very first time I heard it and I keep hearing this often. When sounds have ceased and when you want to have darkness and loneliness of the n

In the October 1st 2015 issue of Caravan, Vidwan T.M.Krishna wrote a lengthy article about M.S.Subbulakshmi titled, 'MS Understood' with the subtitle 'The Myths and Misconceptions around India's most acclaimed musician'.  This is a long read and spans 10 pages. You can read the complete article here Krishna, as his wont, makes lot of sweeping generalizations and hand waving arguments. I just want to react to a few aspects of his article. First, Krishna starts with a straw man, with some unknown singer stating that MS was a hoax. Then Krishna goes on to elaborate on how critics never considered MS to be a great singer and thought that she was just a singer with a ‘good voice’.  Krishna then traces MS’s origins and talks about how her music changed, how the society affected her and how she could not realize her complete potential and so on. You can read all that in the article. Once you have read the article you will understand what I am saying here more cle