Today's vice. Lovely Suddha Saveri based melody. The violin's dual note repetition and the usage of the natural chirping sounds in the prelude - all quintessential Raaja. Also in Suddha Saveri is one of the most unrecognized songs from the BGM of thEvar magan. ManamagaLE makes a short apperance in the last few seconds of the video below. Though not a complete track it is worth its weight in gold.
P.S: Additional Vices. Now I desperately need a shot of Patron Silver.
Hey there. I've finally got on to feedburner, so I can see your email address. Just to confirm, your's ends with a uk1, right? I will send you an email once you confirm.
ReplyDeleteYup that is the one. Do shoot me an email.
ReplyDeleteWas vetti and thinking what to do when I came here. Guess a rerun of thevar magan is due!
ReplyDeleteP.S
Cannot do much justice to the greater part of your post. Not that knowledgeable. Other than knocking off things I've read elsewhere about Raja's use of Suddha Saveri!
If this post got you to rewatch thEvar magan then somethign good came out of it. I've lost count of the number of times I've watchd it, especially the portions prior to periya thEvar's passing. Here is a well-written and unique take on the movie: http://www.allthingskamal.info/blog/2007/08/09/kamal-in-his-elements/
ReplyDeleteAlso about the music feel free to mention anything you may have read elsewhere. All my knowledge on the subject is similarly gathered.
Nothing much. I've heard his heavy use of Sudha Saveri in songs from kizhake pogum rail, meendum kokila. I think it was Radha radha...Can't find it..
ReplyDeleteDear Compli,
ReplyDeletesome more sudha saveri from IR
1. Rettai kiligal andradum pesum
2. sidha kathi pookalae
3. koda manjal thaazh varaiyil
did u hear these songs ???
With Love,
Usha Sankar.
(If you'll allow me a phrasal antiDo,) I was transported to Eleventh Heaven this weekend, courtesy (curtsy?) the cornucopia of catchy tunes from a digitally remastered Sound of Music DVD. Maybe it was the added awesomeness of new tower speakers (sound technology I know next to nothing about, except that it sporadically threatens to pull my heart right out of my ears); maybe it was the Blu-ray player (visual technology I know next to nothing about except that it spews such scintilla-charged outputs, even regular DVDs seem "touched" by some magical Blue Ray!); or maybe, just maybe, it was Song #11...
ReplyDeleteIt's a given that 11 just happens to be this super-special number (shoulder-to-shoulder with 13), alphabetically speaking. But lately, I'm discovering (during brief spurts of alphabetical anestrus) that there may be "multiple" reasons to fall in love with 11 (or 11 reasons to fall in love multiple times?), both in and out of the realm of reality (for instance, Obama is President #44; Milla Jovovich, that ethereal Fifth Element, just turned 33; Nicholas Best's opus on Armistice Day -- How, on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, the First World War Finally Came to an End -- ended up on the library's New Nonfiction shelf last month; Australian author Graeme Base's Award winning children's book The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery features Horace the Elephant, Who is eleven years old; my first pre-adolescent tear shed reading a short story was in sixth grade, age 11, courtesy O'Henry's Gift of the Magi; Hearts in Atlantis, that Stephen King serial short-story (turned into a movie, just like that other masterpiece, The Green Mile) that I've only partially read, revolving around an aging man -- nostalgic for his 11-year-old self --, card games, mind reading, three 11-year-old kids whose lives intertwine...the list goes on).
And oh, loved this IR composition so soulfully rendered (and what are the odds?) by S Jay (raucous bird, duh!).
I'm no expert on IR music (let alone ragas) but I'm not about to let that mar my enjamaaiment of (to borrow the term you used to introduce some of us to the RD/SP B number that, in retrospect, appears to be almost identical in tone and texture -- notice the visual metaphors: red, white, black, yellow, train/horse, Cross pendant/Church, dip in the pool -- not to mention the fluidity/muted-ness of the picturization [read lack of OTT-ness characteristic of songs from the era], to) this awesome SJ and Malaysia Vasudevan number, Katti Vechukko that's my vice for the day (along with that Vani Jayaram song -- Malligai en mannan mayangum, from Dheerga Sumangali -- that my mom keeps swooning at the sound of...Surely something about Karthik and his dad -- the duo made generations swoon, didn't they?).
ReplyDeleteP.S: And oh, Parson Silver as ROI would be a given, had I been a Bartender as opposed to, well, "Rab"-rented!
ReplyDeleteNot the one with Kamal playing Appu, but the one that came 5 years prior, with Kamal playing ghost -- "Japanil Kalyanaraman."
ReplyDeleteListening to IR's Chinna Poo (not to mention Radhe Yen Radhe), rekindled an interest in the movie.
P.S: Speaking of Japan and its Indian connections, "Muthu" (the other maestro's first SuperStar movie score) begs a mention, no?
Fancy being taught a life lesson on the preeminence of a pause, by a classic-rock band you'd barely heard about until a year ago. That was my (surprise) takeaway from the year-that-slipped-silently-by, thanks to track 14 of Tull's Dotcom album, among other things.
ReplyDeleteI've heard and loved A Gift of Roses many times over the last couple months, but it wasn't until this New Year's eve that I bothered to persevere thru the 20-second pause at the end of the track (instead of swiftly switching CDs, as I'd done during drives long and short several times prior, thinking the album had ended, when in fact it had not). And I was obviously taken aback (in a good way) when my (inadvertent) resoluteness was richly rewarded, for interrupting the deafening silence that ensued once A Gift of Roses ended, were these words from the Tull frontman/helmsman himself: "Hello, this is Ian Anderson. Congratulations. You have happened upon upon a bonus song...a preview of the title track from my new solo album "The Secret Language Of Birds." Tweet Tweet. Tweet Tweet. See you in the morning!" Ahh!
The mellifluous chirping of birds that followed, and the song itself, left me at once mangled and mesmerized...a wonderfully unexpected way to ring in the New Year, no? (And small wonder that -- having taken all week to process the potent after-effects of that pause -- I should be blessed with yet another Epiphany: That a Pause, no matter how perverse, painful or protracted, is the proverbial rainbow at the end of which is, yes, a pot of Gold! For instance, that scene in *the* movie (the one that ostensibly raised, no flung, the bar for Bollywood into outer space last year), with the pregnant Pause after the gunshot...followed by the one word that rings in all that's past..."Gold-M"!)
To me, any reminder to ponder The Pause (in other words, mull the lull) is worth its weight in Gold, as is this extract from a Simla Special song that wafted my way this morning: "..kaal kondu aadum pillai, nool kondu aadum bommai, un kaiyil andha noolaa, nee sollu Nandalala.."
When you find yourself not only a surprise winner of that Game of Musical Chairs you have no clue how you got talked into playing
ReplyDeletein the first place, but suddenly also in possession of that Midas-touched orb-from-outerspace, a barely audible "Unbelievable" is
quite possibly the first word you'd utter too -- sufficiently summing up the utter incredulity at stumbling upon your shy self (Is this Me? No it can't be! Pinch Pinch) on the Global Stage, caught in the blinding glare of its LimeLight, and beamed by satellite cameras -- all the way from the Baywatch beach to the Bay of Bengal -- right into a billion eager eyeballs beaming with pride!
...But Seriously (and "Hurrah to alpha Dog from the K9 Klub" apart), all I could think of at the time, were Purple Penstemon blooms. They say this flower withstands long periods of droughts, yet somehow manages to create a profusion of flowers, Spring thru end of Summer. But what are the odds this profusion *happens* during a winter that just sent our way some particularly punishing cold spells? That was the burning question on my mind, as Channel 11 (aka The Peacock Network...eleven-feathered, at that) covered, on the eleventh evening of the year-that-adds-up-to-eleven, those celebrated awards (or is it "awards that celebrate"? And no, it doesn't take your Sixth Sense to "divine" the numerical synchronicity of the event itself, for they flat-out tell you it's the 66th hosting). And as if some cosmic heat receptor automatically senses my every burning question and proceeds to answer them diligently, I started paying attention to the Stars being interviewed amid explosions of verbal euphoria by enthusiastic onlookers of every Stripe...so there! When Betsy Ross decides not to disappoint her fans, I guess everything becomes possible...yes, even an 80-degree temperature in LA, pat in the middle of winter! (And did the Purple Penstemons buck the odds and bloom away or what?!) Now I can hardly wait for the "Constellation of Cars" next month, you know where the Stars arrive at the red carpet in limos...
And oh (this is hardly the smooth segue of the century, but I've got to Run), much as I hate to crank up the comment count on this post to 12, isn't it the Law of the Alphabet that K must (eventually) yield to L? For, L after all is this "Sacred" letter that Makes the Word Go 'Round...
P.S: Speaking of bucking the odds, this piece I read yesterday closes with a line that perhaps echoes a collective sentiment, post eleventh evening: "..triumph over a system that usually operates through anesthetizing consensus." [The article also serves as a nice nod toward a piece posted yesterday by a Go[o]d friend (oh yeah, "Ram" continues to be that motif with "Divine" motive!) who also happens to refer to Chaplin and Keaton in the same para, only while describing Tati of Playtime fame (Thiruvilayaadal, if you're a Thamizh Thinker).]
I took a course called Thermodynamics in second year of college, taught by a professor called Raghurama (Lord Rama himself, to the 20 in 1000 who loved that course...I didn't, for it fried my brains but that's neither my fault not the prof's), with a passion for his subject that I found in no other professor during the rest of my college life. It's probably why his class spilled over into the hallways, what with students sometimes arriving hours early to secure front-row seats just to hear him wax eloquent about entropy and equations of state [of being?], among other things.
ReplyDeleteIt was back then that I last came across Boyle's Law. Years later now, Boyle (this one a Danny, not Robert who formulated the live-saving theory -- incidentally, in the same century the world first saw the Taj Mahal -- that scuba divers took to like fish to water) resurfaces, I hear, with an everyman's "formula" to fathom the Density of Destiny...and oh boy, I can't wait for the stars to align so I can check it out!