Music And Movies

Long back I had written a few posts on ragamalikas in Carnatic music and promised that I will write about ragamalikas in films soon. So here is the post, though it is not 'soon' now. (My posts on 'Ragamalikas in Carnatic music Part 1 , Part 2 & Part 3 ) There are many situations in which ragamalikas are used in films. Today I will concentrate on ragamalikas in bhakthi films. In essence I am going to speak about two things which have almost disappeared from films. Bhakthi films and ragamalikas. In an earlier era, we have seen a stream of bhakthi and mythological films hit the screens in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh (I think it was the case in Kerala and Karnataka too.) With the changing demographics of the viewers the bhakthi and mythological films lost their allure. In earlier days, film watching was a family exercise. The number of films watched with parents in those days was more than those watched with friends. The mythologies wer...

The ragamalika in carnatic music post that I wrote had quite a few people talking to me and giving their feedback. The feedback was good so I thought I will follow up my own post with some more details. My good friend of mine told me that the article did not feature Dikshitar Ashtotra shata raaga taala malika . It features 108 raagas . I had known about this mammoth composition of Dikshitar but I have never heard it. So I did not put it in the article. He also mentioned about the Dasavathara Ragamalika of Swathi Tirunal , ' kamalajasya '. He mentioned that M D Ramanathan has sung this. I have heard this only once and that is why this did not occur to me when composing my post. Another good friend Shaila had replied to me asking me on why the ragamalikas of Purandaradasa were not mentioned. She mentioned krithis like ' devaki nandana ', ' rama rama ' etc. Honestly my knowledge on Purandaradasa's compositions is weak. From what I gather, ma...

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...