Slices of Raaja - 14

Music, it seems, is not too far mathematics as a judge of genius. The simulation and deciphering of complex patterns is what separates the extraordinary from the riff-raff in both businesses. What makes the understanding of musical genius particularly elusive is the generation of patterns from ether.
Consider for instance Pattup PoovE from a 1992 film, Chembaruthi. In the prelude Raaja ensures that we need to work hard to ignore the lead guitar and violins and uncover the bass guitar on its own trip. All the while the congas and drum cymbals keep the smorgasbord of instruments from going completely haywire. Once S.Janaki and Mano begin holding court in the pallavi the intermediate keyboard pecks threaten to expand into something more but disappoint, much like a madras shower. When the drums threaten to turn the first interlude into a pop-rock rendering the flute and percussion come rushing back to return the drummer back to his cymbals. The decision to keep the song within these confines is in many ways Raaja's identity. Allowing the song to progress into an entirely separate genre might have even played well on the ear. But it would not have been signature Raaja. In many ways it is this feeling of "knowing" Raaja without ever having interacted him in any real fashion that draws me to the man as a composer.
Digressions apart, Raaja reserves his true genius, which was the original point of this post, for the second interlude of is song. It begins with a solo bass guitar playing . One bar later the bass abruptly ends to be replaced by two (keyboard generated?) brassy sounds that play around like two unruly children. The congo again becomes the stentorian disciplinarian keeping them in check. Concentrating on just those two dueling notes creates such a unique sense of dissonance that I am quite unable to understand what the source of such an disharmonious sound could be. And yet in the overall collaboration it gels really well. From the single bass guitar to the dueling quantized sounds with the beat to the mellifluous outpouring of the flutes and violins that interlude is the musical equivalent of watching the cracks on the walls of a dam form, develop and eventually have the resultant deluge drown you.

P.S: I sincerely doubt R.K.Selvamani's picturisation had anything to do with my analogy.

P.P.S: Does the girl remind everyone of Nisha Kothari? Or is it just the costume design?