Music And Movies

Long back the Hindu critic, N M Narayanan, during a December season wrote, "With Balamurali not singing this year, it was left to M D Ramanathan to add some color to the music season". Very apt words, since Balamurali added a lot of color to Carnatic music. He showed a different facet of Carnatic music to the world. Carnatic music in his hands was innovative, vibrant and witty. His approach ruffled many feathers but to his talent was so phenomenal that even his life-long critics had to grudgingly concede that he was one of a kind. Balamurali was an artist with his own unique vision. An artist who did not want to walk the standard path. According to him, in each of his compositions he has incorporated something new. Many a times artists revolt against current trends and practices but only a few succeed. The ones who succeed are the ones who have immense faith in their vision and the ability to implement the vision. Balamurali was one such artist. He had his own aestheti...

The close association of Indian film music with classical music and musicians in its formative years meant that a lot of classical ragas came to be used in film music. Very traditional ragas like Kalyani morphed themselves admirably to film music requirement. Universal ragas like Mohanam became natural candidates for film songs. In midst of all the classical ragas there seems to be one raga which is born for film music. In Carnatic music, Sivaranjani is not featured very prominently even in the tail end tukkada section. Ragas like Sindhu Bhairavi, Mand, Revati and others dominate that portion of the concert. In film music, though, Sivaranjani has been used extensively and effectively by various music directors. It is easy to associate Sivaranjani with pathos but the music directors were talented enough to take it beyond that emotion and were able to infuse a sense of joy into the raga. The first Sivaranjani that I remember hearing was a song of pathos, from the movie, 'M...

Setting tales to music is something that happens naturally in our culture. Harikatha, Burra Katha, Villupaatu etc  are loved even today. (Though that tradition has probably given way to film based 'light music' in many places. ) Such musical stories were told in films as well. We will examine two such songs which at the first view seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum but are actually close cousins if we look at it from a different angle. There are many musical tales present in old Telugu films. A couple of them which are very famous are the harikatha in the film 'Vagdanam' and 'Girija Kalyanam' from the film 'Rahasyam'. We will look at the second song here. 'Girija Kalyanam' is about Parvati's love for Siva, her desire to marry him, Manmada trying to entice Siva, Siva burning Manmada with his third  eye, Rati pleading with Siva, Siva bringing back Manmada to life and then marrying Parvati. Gantasala provides music for the...

I was there in Chennai for 4 days this season. My notes on this season - Attended the lecdems at Academy. The one about talas in Yaksha Gana was good. The konnakol lec dem following that was equally good. Two interesting incidents took place during these lec dems. After the Yaksha Gana lec dem Sanjay commented that though the speaker said the tala was jampa tala he was reckoning it as khanda capu. The speaker sheepish said that the way they reckoned it in Yaksha Gana was actually jampa as that he was as 5,5,5 because that was easier for him. After Konnakol demo, where the speaker spoke about how konnakol was known from Bharata's time, Pappu Venugopal Rao remarked, "There are two ways to do research. One is to come to a conclusion first and then look for evidence. The other is to first look for data and then come to conclusion based on data. Your's is the first variety and you presented it in an intelligent fashion" - Sowmya's lec dem was sort of letdown. ...

'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...

In this final part let us examine the legacy of MSV. First, along with Ramamurthy, he was instrumental in modernizing Tamil film music. We have discussed a lot about this earlier. Later, MSV kept changing his style to suit the modern trends. In the 60s we saw how he embraced a more western style of orchestration. Later there was a slight change in style to take on the Hindi influence which was seeping into Tamil film music. As I had earlier indicated, MSV was probably the only one who was able to challenge the Hindi invasion. (Though I call it invasion, I personally feel that any good music coming from anywhere is fine.) He did his bit to give hit songs during those times and partially succeeded. His most important contribution to Tamil film music were ofcourse his melodies and the impact they left of the listening public. Not only on the listening public, they also had an impact of the MDs who followed MSV. We have already seen how Raja had to tune many songs in the MSV mold ...