Classical Ilayaraja

This is the 15th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Dharmavathi is the 59th melakartha raagam. Sa Ri2 Ga2 Ma2 Pa Da2 Ni3 Sa as arohanam and the converse as avarohanam. It is the prathimadhyamam of Gowrimanohari (23rd melam). About couple of years ago Rahman tuned a superb Dharmavathi song in Vandicholai Chinnarasu. The song is sugam sugam vendum. I think the singer of the song is Vani Jayaram. It is one of the best songs that Rahman has tuned in his short career so far. It is a very sexy song. He starts the tune in the madhyama sthayi like Sa Ga Sa Ga, with a very very prominent chord sequences in the background. While another song from the same movie became a good hit (senthamizh naatu thamizhacheeyE sung by the late Shahul Ameed), this lovely song based on a pure classical raagam did not become a hit. Earlier, Rahman has tuned one more Dharmavathi in the movie Gentleman. The song is ottagathai kattikko, which came as an unbelievable melody in that movie with a fantastic rhythm played in the pukka South Indian instrument “thavil”. ...

This is the 14th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. The invincible AIDS virus is fast spreading in India. That is news! (Accidentally turned) bigamist Thamizh writer Balakumaran once stated in an interview that women are like masturbating bowl to men in India. Yeah, lorry drivers acknowledge that statement candidly! They will take the “sarakku” from Chennai to Thirunelvelli by their overnight lorry-borne express. In the gloomily lit bus-stations in-between, they will stop not only for “barota kuruma”, but also looking for their in-expensive bowls of masturbation! There… will come the familiar figure of the betel-nut chewing red-mouthed sexy queen! Our driver’s mouth will twist into a lusty leer! The indomitable Freudian force will drive the male instrument to do its procreative job in few minutes. There… will go our night queen, having earned few bucks to support her indigent family of innumerable malnourished children. In the above encounter between the two beings, not only the rapturous joy of sex, and money will have transacted, but possibly, the seemingly indolent “HIV” fellow too! ...

This is the 13th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. A.R.Rahman is the number one copier in the world. My friend is very much convinced on this matter. He called A.R.Rahman as a mammoth recycling bin that takes its own previously tuned songs and polishes it and presents it in a different form. How dare he copy the great kousalyaa suprajaa tune and use it as the interlude music in maargazhi poovE (May Maadham). My friend boils with anger. How dare the freshmen music director of the movie Meendum Savithri (Ravi Devendran) copy the interlude of maargazhi poovE (which is itself a copied bit from kousalyaa suprajaa) and present it in his song. A chain of copying! My friend has lost his peace and is now a terribly agitated individual. His head is hot with anger! ...

This is the 12th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Thamizh film actress Kushboo has been deified to the status of a Goddess and a temple has been built for her in Trichi! Often I hear news like the deification of Jayalalitha, M.G.R., and other related “chota” news like a man in rural Thamizhnadu seeing God M.G.R in his cow’s eye! These are all instances that narrate the conspicuous births of Gods, or rather, the conspicuous deification of ordinary human folks. Given the evidence that these farcical news items do happen in the gullible Thamizhnadu, one has the right to make conjectures that Jesus Christ could have been a very very ordinary man, just like Kushboo. He could have had good human qualities and could have helped his neighbours to buy kerosene from ration shop and old ladies to cross busy roads like Bhagyaraj in Inru Poi Nalai Vaa! His unfortunate, pathetic death at an young age at the hands of local villains could have created a sympathy wave. And now, in this 21st century it will be castigated as an outright act of profanity, if someone dares to question the divinity status of the messiah. ...

This is the 11th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. V.G.Pannerdass has got an experimental animal in his V.G.P Golden Beach near Madras! That is his “goorka”. He pays that watchman only to stand near the gate with an expressionless face. Whatever the passersby do, he would stand there with the same old expressionless face! Let Kamal Hassan do all the “seshtai” that he does in the last scene of Moonram Pirai, the VGP goorka’s mask like face would show neither happiness nor sadness! He’d neither cry nor laugh. The VGP management is so proud of this guy that it is even ready to bet a hefty prize money if that would motivate somebody to make this guy cry or laugh. I cannot help wondering at VGP’s morbid taste in having this kind of a person at their gate. ...

This is the 10th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. The mind is a wondrous subset of the terrific biological entity, the brain. Literally, the heart is often alluded to as the site of thinking. In old Thamizh cinemas, the heroine would invariably say to the villain at some point (like the inevitable rape scene!) “naasakkaara, unakku idhaiyamE illaiyaa?” while the unmindful villain would be busy disrobing her with a terrible “ha ha ha” laughter! Why does the heroine have to say this kind of a scientifically preposterous statement, while it was the villain’s brain that decided to rape her, and not the poor “heart”! Does the evil mind of the villain exist in his brain? If so, where is it in the brain? Or, is the mind just the product of the functioning of the brain? A disease process affecting the frontal lobe of the brain might make an individual loose all his social inhibition and pee in the public, or to go to Bourbon street in New Orleans, or to Mardigraz in Galveston! Damaging the visual cortex of a villain might make him blind, but he might still try to follow the heroine with the help of her bangle noise! Damaging his temporal lobe might render him hearing impaired, but he might still try to get to the heroine with the help of “koondal” scent cues (refer: Thiruvilayadal!). As a last effort you may want to damage his parietal lobe, but then he would still see the heroine, even though he might not know what to do to the heroine! So, where the heaven is the so called MIND?! ...

This is the 9th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. There was a great furore in the Indian parliment a couple of years ago. Since the daily scene there is pretty much so, does this furore need any special mention? Yes. This furore was a meaningful one! It happened when the Indian government signed the GATT agreement. No wonder, the stupid “swadeshi” oriented parties like the Bharathiya Janata party opposed the selling of India to the “videshi” through GATT. But as an aftermath, signing the GATT agreement had a terrible effect on the interest of India in certain areas. For example, the medical value of neem oil has been well known in India for centuries. It seems some of the western pharmaceutical companies re-discovered the medical value of neem oil and started proceeding to claim patent for the product! In that case, any Indian company which tries to “manufacture” neem oil and tries to market it has to pay money to these western companies! Is it not funny and outrageous at the same time? Patenting is a powerful tool to protect ownership. It seems that it will be better if we patented both of our meaningful and meaningless traditional techniques to protect our interests. You may not know what will be re-discovered (and patent claimed) in the western hemisphere in days to come! Maybe, some scientist here will discover that giving unboiled rice with its hard covering (husk) to new born babies will result in the immediate death of those babies within few hours and secure patent for this finding! Conisder how this will affect the interest of our Indian mothers in the far south, who have been using this traditional technique to “close the chapter” of their unwelcomed, stigmatic female children! Poor mommas! ...

This is the 8th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. South Indian classical music has got an excellent treasure of superb names. Most of the raaga names seem to be Sanskrit derivatives. Even though there are some Thamizh equivalent names for raagas such as Sankarabharanam, nobody uses them. Ki.Veeramani is probably very sad about this. Maybe, Vairamuthu has some plans like translating all the raaga names into Thamizh as he tried translating Thyagaraja’s ’nee dhayaradha’ in Sindhu Bhairavi movie as un dhayavillaiyaa (if only Ki.Veeramani was ready to fund the project, from the 5 lakh rupees that he got for perpetrating the deeds of thandhai Ee.Vae.Ra. Periyar, from Selvi Jayalalitha). Alternatively, Ki.Veeramani may get somewhat sensible and appreciate the high-level idiocy in trying to translate the proper nouns in raaga names. And he may rather to encourage a lower level of idiocy by goading his clan to replace all the Sanskrit sounding sounds like ‘ksha’, ‘jha’ etc in all the raagas to their Thamizh equivalents and then accept the raaga names. Then, Shanmukhapriya would be called as Dhanmukapriya (as Vibhishanan in Valmiki Ramayanam became Vibidanan in Kamba Ramayanam)! ...

This is the 7th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Kanakangi is the first melakartha raagam. It is also called as Kanakaambari (what a wonderful name!). While man’s aesthetic sense gave birth to raagas like Mohanam, Sudha Saveri etc, his increasing scientific knowledge about the structure of music over a period of many centuries gave birth to raagas such as Kanakangi. In the days of yore, when man began exploring the music world, there was no Kanakangi. All he knew were those tunes or raagas that were immediately appealing to his mind. No wonder, simple pentatonic raagas like Mohanam made their genesis during that early period of man’s irresistable pursuit for melody. Later, as is usual, science took over the aesthetic sense. The dominance of MOOD, which often served the purpose of being the mighty commander of raaga creation, was pulled down by the even mightier science. That the central theorm governing the whole of music was only simple mathematics became evident. The tip of the iceberg eventually lead to the unearthing of the whole of the rest! String instruments like the veenai and gottu vadyam etc., helped the ‘music thirsty’ thathas of yesteryears apply some good logic and figure out the progenitor raagas of the already existing raagas and narrow it down to the 72 melakartha system. It became a relatively simple task like filling in the unknown elements in the periodic table once you knew the general structure of the atom in various elments! The first melakartha became christened as Kanakangi. ...

This is the 6th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. In carnatic music, while we have three kinds of rishabham, gandharam, daivatham, and nishadham each, the madhyamams are only two kind. They are the suddha and prathi madhyamam. If only the madhyamams had life, they are certain to demand reservation for the reason that the other more populous swarams like the rishabhams are dominating the music scene, not giving enough space for the madhyamams to come up in life! However, any species that is less in population become precious in due course. That is the general law of the nature. That is true for the madhyamams too. They are wonderful precious swarams. ...

This is the 5th of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. In cinema music, starting from the period of Ilayaraja, the lyricists got into a pact of servitude with the music directors. They were dictated by the mighty music directors. Since the selling of audio cassette and the success of the movie were only depended upon ‘how catchy’ the tunes were, and not on the quality of the lyrics, it became the unquestioned ‘rajyam’ of the music directors like Ilayaraja. He would come early in the morning to the Prasath recording theatre. Probably by that time the lyricist would be waiting there already. Maybe they even routinely prostrated before him as he entered into the theatre like the God incarnate himself! Then he would fill the theatre with his tunes in the ’thanthana thaana thathana thaana thaana nanana’ form. The lyricist had to get this into his intellect and rack his brain to get words that would replace the ’thaana thathana’ junk! What a pity! If Subramania Bharathiar had been alive he would’ve shed blood tears at the sordid state of Thamizh in cinema! Ilayaraja was definitely one important reasons for this abyssmal degenerancy in the state of ‘kanni’ Thamizh! (Maybe the LTTE/DMK/DK combo have Ilayaraja in their murder hit list for causing this change to their beloved Thamizh!). ...

This is the fourth of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan is a very popular carnatic violinist. He is one of the successful rebels in the field. His katcheris are a mixture of classical and commercial blend. In his classical concert he will play kallum muLLum kaalukku meththai (Iyyappa song) and in the end say ‘samiyae saranam Iyyappa’ in his violin. If you go to his house he will say ‘vaanga saar vaanga, enna sappidaringa? Kaappiya, teaya?’ in madhyama sthayi in his violin. If you say tea then he will turn inside and signal his wife in the kitchen ‘adiyae… saarukku oru cup tea konda’ in thara sthayi, of course, in his violin! He doesn’t talk much, you know…. Only his violin….! ...

This is the third of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Subhapanthuvarali is a ‘bayangara soga’ raagam. If you hear it you will cry; I will cry; ‘saraa log’ will cry. Given the conditional event of Rajiv Gandhi or Indira Gandhi’s death occuring, Subhapanthuvarali played on the radio or TV by some ’thenga moodi’ bhagavathar during the days of mourning will make even those music insensitive Indira Congress leaders shed at least ‘crocodile tears’! Can you imagine this raagam being used in the cinema for a sexy scene like that in ‘Hot Shots’ in which the hero Charlie Sheen fries eggs on the heroine’s umbilicus as though it was a bunzen burner?! Yes, there is a song in Subhapanthuvarali for a situation like the above said, in the movie Getti Melam. That was the first movie in which director Visu joined Ilayaraja, starring Karthik and Sasikala. Visu had tried some sexploitation in that song sequence by bringing Sasikala in swimsuit for few minutes, Karthik grazing over her all the time! The song is dhagamae undanathe, thindaaduthe manamae. That was pure Subhapanthuvarali. Maybe it evoked sexy mood. Maybe not! Neither the movie nor the song was a big hit. Perhaps the failure was only due to the ineptitude of the raaga selection. Visu never joined with Ilayaraja after that! ...

This is the second of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. There are very few instances in which the identity of a rare raaga in a cinema song is so well handled and shown (to the extent that) we could even use these songs as good a reference as keerthanas for those respective raagas. To quote a few, K.V.Mahadevan’s paattum naanE (Thiruvilayaadal) in the raagam Gowrimanohari, M.K.Thiagaraja Bhagavathar’s soppana vaazhvil magizhndhu in the raagam Vijayanaagari. These are uncommonly sung raagas. It is true that there are excellant keerthanais like gurulekha (Gowrimanohari) in these raagas. But to a common rasika, it could be gone ahead and suggested paattum naanE to understand Gowrimanohari, because KVM has handled it in splendid form. The way T.M.S starts the song in thara sthayi rishabham with his perfect voice and renders it, it is like eating a ’nila pournami’ feast in the banks of kaveri. That song has become an absolute reference for Gowrimanohari. The question is: Has Ilayaraja any such ‘reference’ songs to his credit? Yes. Many! ...

This is the first of 15 articles titled Classical Ilayaraja appeared on Usenet in the 90s. I’ve added links to the songs, so you can listen as you read. You could also try my Tamil song search. Recently, I watched the movie Chembaruthi on video. One of those unethical, “kuppai” screen printed video cassette, you know, that gives you a vision like that of a “soda-butti” watching TV without his spectacles! Ilayaraja has done a fantastic job in that movie. Though I had heared all those songs many times while I was in India, watching that movie created a reminiscent train of thoughts in my mind, about Ilayaraja, his music, the dramatic change he brought about in Thamizh cinema. I thought that it would be worthwhile to discuss his music, particularly the CLASSICAL aspect! I am aware that it is not possible to write about all his carnatic oriented songs, about how he has handled those raagas, how he has deviated from the classical style etc. But it would definitely be interesting to pour out our ideas once in a while in a random order of the raagas covered by him. ...