Music And Movies

In a recent youtube video, singers Ranjani and Gayathti, addressed the question, "Why Classical Music?" This was part of their RaGa candid series which they upload on every Monday. (The series has some nice episodes and some so-so episodes). You can watch their take on 'Why Classical Music?" here I saw the video and I was quite disappointed. Nothing they said was very specific to classical music. You could apply what they said to any form of music: film music, ghazal, folk music and so on. One of the points they say is that you need to be concentrating on various aspects like sruthi, tala, words etc. The challenge was the same or even tougher in film music. When the orchestra is playing the harmony or sometimes counter melody, the drumming is on and the bass guitar is playing a chord progression, you should be able to sing amidst all these distraction. If you think of singers like Janaki, SPB, Yesudas, Chitra, Jency, Malaysia Vasudevan et al, they would have ...

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)...

I am sure everyone who is following Carnatic music would have by now heard of the various controversies pertaining to Carnatic musicians singing Christian songs and so on. A lot of people have expressed their opinion on this and as usual, people who have no interest in Carnatic music have jumped in as well as they see this as an opportunity to establish their 'liberal' or 'traditional' credentials. There have many unfortunate Carnatic musicians who have become victims of the shrill shouting. In this article, I do not want to talk on these issues (they have already been debated enough) but rather would want to see what sort of challenge we have if we want to expand Carnatic music move beyond Hindu religion and also discuss if such a need exists at all. Let us ask this question first. "Does Carnatic music belong only to the Hindus?". The answer is obvious: NO. Carnatic music is a musical form and it belongs to the world. Having said that, we also need to ...

(Kanu Roy) Kanu Roy is not a well-known music director. He has worked only on a few Hindi films and yet he has given songs which are long lasting. I will put up a few of them here. First up, this lovely song 'boliye surili boliya' from the film 'Grihavpravesh'. The lyrics of Gulzar.  Sung by Bhupinder and Sulakshana Pandit. I would suggest you listen to the song and not see the visuals :) The song setup is very nice. The melody is top class and Sulakshana Pandit does the fun part very well. This is the domain of people like SPB and Janaki. Sulakshana Pandit matches them in this regard. I had first heard of Kanu Roy when I heard a Manna Dey song 'phir kahin kohi phool kila'. I came to know Kanu Roy was a friend of Basu Bhattacharya and gave the music to some of his films. Here is the lovely 'phir kahin' Kanu Roy also gave us another melodic Manna Dey number 'hanse ki chaha ne' from 'Avishkar' And finally, it was Kanu ...

Recently, 'Rajavin Ramanamalai' was released. This title could cause some confusion as a title named 'Ramanamalai' with Raja's tunes had been released earlier. As it stands, we have two Ramanamalais. I am going to write my opinion on the second Ramanamalai. This album has a total of 10 songs, 8 of which are tuned by Raja and 2 of them tuned by a person called KVS and orchestrated by Raja. Let's have a look at the songs. Except for the Bombay Jayashree song, 'arunagiri ramanan', all songs start with a small speech of Raja, wherein he talks about Ramana Maharishi. I am including samples of some songs. You can buy the album here:  http://bookstore.sriramanamaharshi.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=180&products_id=6679 'thirunalum' - Sung by Raja . This is a wonderful tune. Very simple and touching. I am not sure which raga this is based on. Is it Pahadi? If you know, let me know. The song has a lovely bass line. The orch...