Music And Movies

Yesterday (19th Aug 2019) came the news that Khayyam saab has passed away at a ripe old age of 92. With him, an era has truly ended, with all the music directors of his times having passed away earlier. This is a humble tribute to this wonderful music director. The first time I heard the name Khayyam was when 'Kabhi Kabhi' was released. I was in school those days and even then I had this habit of checking out who the music director was for a particular movie. The posters of those times used to have this clearly marked. R D Burman, Kalyanji Anandji, Shankar Jaikishen, Laxmikanth Pyarelal were some of the well known names during those times. So I was seeing a totally new name now. Khayyam. The songs of 'Kabhi Kabhi' were major hits. Mainly the title song and 'main pal do pal ka shayar hoon'. Everyone was fascinated by these songs. Listen to how the music and lyrics merge in 'main pal do pal ka shayar hoon'. Lyrics of Sahir. Amitabh, by then, w

July 25th was the 111th birth anniversary of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. On this occasion I had written a thread on Twitter on him. I am expanding it here and saving for future reference. One of the aspect of his music that I love is the way he structures a krithi. There are many ways to sing a krithi. Semmangudi believes in structuring the krithi in such a way that it is highlights the development of a raga. By structure, I mean his selection of sangatis, how many times you repeat a line, how you phrase the words, the pauses, everything. This gives it an order. And once this order is established, it is repeatable. The important thing is just not just the selection of sangatis but in which order they are sung. The idea is to slowly reveal the range of the raga. Each sangati must very naturally flow into the next one. This is how the edifice of the raga is built using the krithi. Once this structure for a particular krithi is established, this becomes what is commonly called as a &

Sahana is a quintessential carnatic ragam. We don't find this ragam in Hindustani music. Ofcourse we can't expect such vakra ragas in Western music. Any phrase of Sahana is enough to give you a sense of joy and peace. This raga is well suited for portraying 'karuna rasa'. As you know, in Carnatic music we have both kalpana sangeetham and kalpita sangeetham. In case of kalpita sangeetham, pre-composed music, the greatest Sahana must be 'meragadu rammanave', the kshetragnar padam. The best rendition of it, no surprise here, was by Brinda and Mukta. There is a CD of Brinda Mukta, AIR recording of Padams and Javalis. The rendition in that is outstanding with both of them in top form. In the clip below, this padam starts around the 1hr 35m mark. From the krithi perspective, the most famous Sahana would be 'Giripai' and MD Ramanathan's rendition is generally accepted as the golden standard for this krithi. The record he gave of this song (for HMV)