The Coral Atoll

Utterly sublime piece of music. Communication.

A Song to Remember

When I look back now I am not sure of the exact moment that changed an ordinary campus musical evening to one that changed my perception of listening. I do not even know if it was just a moment or if a series of moments in the years prior set me up for that evening. The engineering college I went to had a good music band and often there were evening performances to attend. There were many songs sung, plenty of popular numbers that had us jumping and the band was forever practising for upcoming shows. On some evenings new singers were introduced once the crowd was sufficiently enthused. For the new singers the margin of error was very narrow and the crowd offered its verdict (boo or woo hoo) moments after the voice was heard. 

I like to think that when R came on stage that evening he walked confidently and commanded respect. Instead, R, gangly, wearing a long shirt over his trousers, stooped and diffident, seemed to labour his way to the microphone. There was a preparatory silence from the crowd, tinged with the unease that would soon erupt into booing. Then he picked up the microphone, the background music started playing and he sang in that haunting clear voice the song that we had heard a hundred times already. Yet we had never heard this song. I remember feeling the nature of the silence change - impatient to stunned to expectant to ecstatic. The song stretched itself out in time and it seemed to me that everyone was in love with R. There was just him the voice and us the ears. How did the song end? Did unease creep back into the silence or did one reflexive applause snap us out of our reverie? I don't know. Suddenly there was the thunderous applause, the crowd on its feet and clapping for a long time. Then R bowed, slowly the stoop and the diffidence seemed to return, and walked away. There were other songs that followed but memory had had its fill. On our way back to the hostel many of us cheered when R walked past and there was a respectful appreciation in the way we spoke about his song. I only remember speaking about his song. 

I never knew R personally. Though he regularly sang for the college band after that evening and though he sang well, my friends and I never felt the same magic. What was it that happened to transform a famous song (S P Balasubrahmanyam and Ilaiyaraaja had created this song in 1979 for the movie Pagalil Oru Iravu and since then loyal listeners had turned it into a classic number) into R's song? I like to think he loved the song and he sang it sincerely and the crowd couldn't help but respond. When I look back now I understand what people mean when they say life shines through.

Gaallo Thelinattunde

I remember hearing it somewhere earlier this year, may be when I was visiting India . It hid somewhere at the back of my mind until I happened to hear it again  accidentally during a visit to a friend's this week. I love the tonic progression and harmony of the song, like waves - crests and falls esp. in the second stanza - very smooth.  Haven't heard of Devi Sri Prasad but this song reminds me a a lot of early Rahman especially Roja, Muthu etc. Haven't watched the song yet, but will do now.

Underground Authority

Underground Authority is a hard rock band from Kolkata. A friend alerted me to their performance of Rahman's Maa Tujhe Salaam on the Colors channel. They seem to do a lot of remixes of A R Rahman's numbers and their presentation is interesting. I liked Maa Tujhe Salaam.




For more videos of the band: handy search link

Pachai Nirame

The song picturization is absolutely ensorcelling. As you can see, the song is based on colour themes with suitable locales in India as background. The tune is soft and is reinforced by the slow paced camera which captures the rapturous actors in love as the motifs translate from one colour to another throughout the sequence. The two long shots of the actress dancing – one in blue and other in green are ravishing. Also, the couple looked good together, something I have never found often in Indian movies even by accident.

When I had Lavanya for a translation of lyrics , she gladly obliged. So here it is

O Companion...O Friend, love, love has colours

And you, you dear, you have colours too

....

Green O Green!

In the stirring of desire

In the smile of the grass

In the joy of your friendship,

the colour of the tender leaf

the colour of your every nerve;

Every green, the colour of your approval.

***

In the beak of the beautiful parrot

In the betel tongue of the young chit

In the fresh bloom of the blood rose

In the unshod feet of the newborn

Are the different shades of your anger;

Every red, the colour of your anger.

***

O Companion...O Friend, love, love has colours

And you, you dear, you have colours too

***

The yellow of the morning sky

The yellow of the tender flame

The yellow of the gold earring

The yellow that blooms in the marigold.

Yellow O Yellow!

The colour of the evening moon;

Every yellow, in the palette of your heart.

***

The colour of the waveless sea

The hue of the cloudless sky

The brilliance in the peacock's neck.

The blues painted in the water-lily,

The blues splashed on the violet flower;

Every blue, in the twinkle of your eye.

***

In the dark of the night

In the grey of the monsoon

In the wings of the crow

In the Kajal of her eye,

O Fabric of the singing cuckoo!

Every black, the tone of your hair.

***

White O White!

The white of the leucas flower

White O White!

The white of the human eye

White is the leucas flower that breaks in the rain

The whitest is the white of your love.

***

Of Flutes and Nav(i)eens

A R Rahman has been largely responsible for making the Tamil/Indian film music scene a place where many talents bloom. In the pre-Rahman era it was very hard to find more than two male singers per film music album. In fact two was usually too much and occurred only when the movie involved more than one hero and had a song where both heros had to sing together. Such was the dominance of the few successful singers that there were only few successful singers.


Post the phenomenal success of Rahman's debut Roja, a number of interesting things happened. One was the appearance of many fresh vocalists. Another was the prominence given to the instrumentalists who worked on Rahman's tracks. The first musician to come to mind is drums Sivamani who has collaborated with many musicians over the years. The one who caught my attention the most was Flute Naveen. Remember the haunting theme music of Bombay? There is a certain lack of cockiness in the way Naveen's flute flows. No matter what the genre is, his playing manages to be both assured as well as humble.


Some years ago, Naveen brought out an album Fluid, which, for a period of time, used to be my mainstay background score when cooking. One track in particular, Mohana, remains a favourite and I listen to it from time to time. It never fails to cheer me up. Naveen's second album Cafe Fluid came out a few months ago (Note to Self: buy Cafe Fluid)


I have always had the impression that Naveen is camera shy and was therefore quite surprised some months earlier when he made an appearance in the popular Airtel Super Singer Junior season 2. There were quite a few types of flutes that he played on in that programme, one, interestingly, looked like a flute stuck on a keyboard. And what was even more interesting to me was that he looked so much younger than I remembered him. Imagine then what I must have done: look him up on google. Only to realize that like a good Indian masala movie with double trouble, there were two flautists with the same name - one Naveen, one Navin Iyer. The former, the Fluid man, the latter & the younger, the one that came on the Airtel show. Incidentally, both have played for Rahman. And Navin Iyer is an interesting musician too.

Aaron Copland

In Lionel Shriver's prize winning, chilling book, We Need to Talk About Kevin, the protagonist Eva in writing to and about her husband, mentions his liking Aaron Copland's Quiet City, as a sign that his music taste isn't entirely irredeemable.


I hadn't heard of Copland until that line from the above mentioned book. Like most discoveries, once I started reading about him, I realized how often his name shows up in related reading and what a legendary composer he was. Naturally there will always be people who will not have heard of him until a mention somewhere, a chance sound while passing by will change the state of things. Then life would change forever, yet again, because one man's music would have melded into another man's consciousness.


Quiet City, originally composed by Aaron Copland in 1939 for Irwin Shaw's eponymous play, has since become an American classic. Post Sep 11, 2001, this piece took on a certain poignance.


One version, with images from the Sep 11 disaster:





Quiet City and related Copland tracks from iLike


Copland on last.fm


The Aaron Copland Collection at the Library of Congress


What sort of books would Copland have read? A peek at his private collection of books.