New age IR's Raga Choices

Suresh: On chandrabimbthin, the rhythm progression is strange. Not sure if it's the movie situation. If you take it out (same for many of the new age hits), I'll like this song more - but still won't be able to call it fantastic.
On vakra ragas, riti gowla will be my counter example. He was the first one to try it and since then many are using it and consistently churning out hits. Similarly desh. I have loved almost every desh that IR has tuned. He has so much innate feel of the raga, all were top class from 'vizhiyil puthu' to 'oranjaaram' to 'ennai kavarnthizhjutha'. More importantly, not giving any sign of resemblance. So vakra nature is not strictly a discouraging factor IMO. Maybe he needs some special motivation..

KV: After reading your post, I feel like I can understand Kamalhassan interviews like a baby.. :D

vel,

'News' lists only the last 50 new topics. Genre gems is kind of older I suppose. Don't worry, if it gets very active, it'll get listed as hot threads under Ir albums (left menu).

RR,

I guess we should agree to disagree on 'Chandrabimbathin'. I find the rhythm especially very funky/new/engrossing etc. Added to it is the lovely chorus, which our Shank had pointed out earlier. I personally consider this a terrific song.

Coming to vakra ragas, as a wise sage once said, "All generalizations are false, including this one". So there are bound to be exceptions. At the same time, let us take Reethigowla. If I can recall correctly Raja has given 4 songs in this raga. A very small number compared to his enormous output. 'chinna kannan', 'rama kanavemiraa', 'thalayai kuniyum' and 'meetadha oru veenai' are what I am thinking about. Of this, I would say 'rama kanavemi raa' is a sort of standard issue Reethigowla and given that it is used in a Harikatha, works well for the situation. The other three are quite unique. 'thalayai kuniyum' being quite different from 'chinna kannan'. When 'meetadha oru veenai' came out, you could clearly make out that Raja wanted to give a different flavour to RG and succeeds here. Yet the fact that he also only composed 4 songs in this raga should give us some indication that making every attempt unique (which Raja wants to do) could be a challenge.

The other MDs have successfully used RG is something I agree. Rahman in 'Mudhalvan', Vidyasagar in 'Thambi', James Vasanthan in 'Subramanyapuram'. Vidyasagar's song didn't become too popular, Rahman's song was a hit while James Vasanthan's 'kangal irandal' was a humungous hit. All three were enjoyable melodies. At the same time I would say all three were 'standard issue' RG. There was nothing unique about them. Something which made me go 'Wow, the composer has done something unique to this raga'.

Hmmm, i seriously think the only solution is IR should first consult with some chronically dissatisfied experts here before he tunes his next raga based song ....

Idhu ellam avaroda thalai ezhuthu ! Enna panni tholaikaradhu?!

He is the most unfortunate musician i would say who has to put up with a grossly thankless audience , even after doing so much for music in all these years.

While people have limited options to turn to (except often to IR) for their intellectually stimulating wishlists, they tend to forget that beggars cant be chosers ! For example, the jazz music played before the Raaja concert did not appeal to me at all, but i fell in love with IR's monkey chatter theme music from mumbai express right from the first hearing. What to do, no one else comes this close to engaging the audience. Such is his golden expertise / USP in making the music connect with us. Since there has never been any competition to him in the innovation aspect, he can afford to take his sweet time to innovate at a pace that he decides.

We should first learn to take more time to find out and learn what IR has done and not be superficially dismissive just to look cool or to be seen as a tough critic !

Vel,

I think this process started when people realized that Raja was not invincible. (According to me he is still invincible musically but I talking commercial success here.) I guess lot of fans in the 90s thought he will mount a very serious challenge and ensure he keeps the throne. Unfortunately for them it did not happen and Rahman became a great commercial success displacing Raja. That subconsciously makes lot of people to stick to the 80s and proclaim that what was provided at the time is enough.

Secondly, I think lot of Raja fans (consciously or subconsciously) were taken in by the new sounds of Rahman and his new tunes. So much so that they thought Raja will also tune like that in order to be in tune with the times. But Raja did not do that and his music, at that time, in front of the newly glowing and lovingly recorded music, was sounding dated. I am not putting this forth as a theory but speaking from my own experience. Today I may be embarrassed to say it but during those days, even the music of 'Avatharam' and 'Raman Abdullah' "was OK but not upto the standard of the those days" in my thinking. in a way many probably felt 'betrayed' by Raja, because he did not sound 'modern' enough.

The third angle is the converse of the second. In case of certain fans, they thought Raja will counter Rahman by falling back to his earlier days. They thought he will come up with tunes in newer ragas, or use the manual orchestra more, never give up on SPB/KJY/Janaki and stuff like that. In other words, they thought Raja will create the 80s once again and that will defeat Rahman. Raja went in exactly the opposite direction. He started using synth, the manual orchestra was not used too often, his tunes didn't resemble his 80s tunes and he started using the more 'modern' singers like Hariharan and Unni Krishnan and 'gave up' SPB and Janaki. The synth did not sound as good as Rahman's did, the recording quality was not too great and many synth effects were outdated. All this added to many of the people becoming disillusioned and falling back on 'nothing like live instruments' and 'if there is even one synth beat, your song is bad' mode. If you understand this, you can understand why it is only Raja's fans who crib so much about his synth usage. No one cribs when the same synth is used by Rahman, Harris or Yuvan. I have seen many Raja fans enjoy songs of Rahman, Harris or Yuvan which are heavily synth based but they cannot take it when Raja uses it. To them it showcases the fact that Raja is not as good as Rahman in this aspect. The tragedy here is, if people were to observe carefully, especially Raja's Malayalam songs of the 90s and early 2000s, they can realize that he had zoomed far ahead in exploring the potential of the synth and has used it in multifarious ways. Ravi Natarajan had a nice series on Raja's synth usage and if people read it they may get some insights into it.

What people do not realize is that Raja himself has not been perturbed (musically) by these changes. Of course you can ask me, how do I know? I know nothing about Raja personally so I can only conclude this from his music. The only allowance that Raja made for the 'challenge' was the use of synthesizer. Recently I have been hearing lots of his post 1992 songs and one thing I notice is that nowhere are there any gimmicks. If someone were responding to a challenge and is desperate, it will show in his / her art. It doesn't show in Raja's music. As Rajasaranam says always and which Plum mentioned recently, Raja started being true to the director's vision and his music always followed that to the T. So when a 'Kalapani' came which needed a grand score, it got it. Whereas a V Shekar film like 'Vietnam Colony' got the subdued music which the film needed. 'Guru' got a score of epic proportions whereas a 'Karagattakari' got the folk is required. All the while Raja was sticking to his musical principles and his understanding of music vis a vis the movie and not vis a vis the music business. Even today he sticks to the same theory. For him, film music meant both the parts were integrated, film with music and not film 'and' music.

Additionally Raja was also moving forward. While I am not a great fan of some of his synth usage in Tamil films, I am big fan of how he used synth in Malayalam movies, 'sharadendhu paadi', 'manjulum raathi matram','virahamay', 'punnara poo', 'sivamallipoove', 'arudhe arudhe' etc showed how synth can be used to touch you. All these songs were in the 90s and each one touches you deeply. The 90s also see him work more with tunes where the orchestration is minimal, letting many a times the tune carry the whole song. After this came the phase where he started getting more and more interested in jazz which resulted in newer modes of music from him. As I have I always claimed, he has been updating himself and moving along. 'Virumandi', 'Mumbai Express', 'Pitamagan', 'Tiruvasagam', 'Pazhassi Raja'. Just check out how 'Virumandi' was. How can a MD, who all his life has been giving folk music, come up with something like 'Virumandi', which sounds so very different from what was done earlier. When the 'Ilangathu veesude' was played during Raja's recently live show, the person sitting next to me said, "How can man come up with such a tune, which has no trace of any song he did earlier and yet bear his unmistakable mark?" Shows how much Raja was working to keep things fresh and not to get nostalgic about his past.

The case of Raja's fans and their reaction, short term and long term, to his loss in popularity is something which can take a full PhD to do. The relationship between Raja and his fans is a complex ones and the fan base is also varied. Ranging from those who actively hate him but cannot do without his music all the way to fans who have always believed in him (like Rajasaranam) and those in between like me, who for a few years thought he was gone but realized that he never went off. It was our musical taste which changed a bit and after having listened to other types of music, I now love Raja even more. I have come to realize Raja will never want to be a man of the past. He wants to be a man of the present, always exploring newer avenues. I am happy for that and applaud it whenever I can.

So we shouldn't be too upset that there are people who now demand so many things from Raja. As Kamal said, we don't demand it from other MDs. We do it from Raja, because we know only he can deliver that!!!

Suresh & Others :

Just for record : that IR has given some Sahana short piece in the Harischandra kadhai in "Thunai Iruppal meenatchi" alongwith Thodi etc. if I remember correct.

CSR

[QUOTE=Sureshs65;798580]thumburu,

Maybe I should have made myself more clear but what I meant there about Sahana and Natakurunji is not that you cannot tune in them. More that it is difficult to give lot of songs in these ragas and display variety because of their inherent structure. Ofcourse KVM gave that lovely 'pathen sirithen' which till date happens to be the best Sahana in film music. Natakurunji has been used in MKT's day ('raagathil sirandhadhu naatakurunji' goes one line in that song.) 'Kannamoochi' predominantly takes the same raga swaroopa that 'Paal Vadiyum Mugam' displays. As you say it is predominantly Naatakurunji but then wanders away.

Suresh, I do see a point in yours. As you guess, Raja might have wanted to bye-pass Sahana as he might have felt certain swara sequence could be repetitive or could give away too much of the raga feature for a film song or like what IR always tells, doen't predetermine the ragam and just composes whatever tune comes to him naturally or not motivated enough to excel a benchmark of a song already existing[parthen sirithen] or plain, exercising his creator's liberty of not taking a fancy to the ragam. I was only showing a surprise , Raja bring the only TFM MD to have touched upon most number of ragas, more so,even the most uncommon in fim music like Gowlai, Rasikapriya, Kedharam etc .
I have already told this many times in this forum, I have a weakness for Raja's Shanmugapriya and can't seem to have enough of them.Along the melodic lines of "mazhai varuvadhu mayilukku theriyum" or "thamthana thamthana" or "rathiri neram rayiladi oram", I would like a few more from him in future.

KV, rant I did, few years before in this very forum. Not now. Read my post again . I used the word "mild" disappointment akin "Adhangam". Honestly I don't expect too much from Raja now a days. I had already attributed the cruel age factor, much to Sureshji's chagrin :)

KV Quote :
" I'm not saying his songs in certain ragams are not there, but just saying that it'd be better if there were! "

- Perfectly said. Agreed.

thumburu,

:) As you know I neither buy the age argument nor have I given up on his music. I still expect a lot more from him. And I am sure he will deliver :) 'Snehaveedu' was a stunner and I am sure there will be more in the coming days.

Great post Sureshji, especially the Ph.D part about the psychology of IRFs :lol2:

Quote:

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Ranging from those who actively hate him but cannot do without his music all the way to fans who have always believed in him (like Rajasaranam) and those in between like me, who for a few years thought he was gone but realized that he never went off.

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Add another category :
Those who always "selectively" appreciated IR's music -loving some, liking some and showing no interest in some- and never rated any successors greater regardless of the commercial ups/downs :-)

Analyzing a little bit of this group's psychology, I would say that they're typically not rAgA-knowledgeable, some sound-knowledgeable (or know a little bit about instruments, notes, pitch, tune, tempo etc) and are more influenced by the "sensation-stimuli" phenomena than scientific / mathematic analysis stuff. That way, their own personal life situations (padippu, kalyANam / kudumbam, job, relocation, peers) influence the musical sensation to a great extent than even the absolute quality of the stimulus :-)

To correct Suresh's post a little..
Vietnam Colony was not by V.Shekar - it was by Santhana barathi (i think - but definitely not V.Shekar).
The only theory in defense of Raaja, I am putting up here is probably this..
Theory: He feels that he has done all he could in the area of carnatic - where very few ppl take notice of what has been done and whatever you have to do cannot be presented successfully without the right singers. Plus there needs to be a script that needs heavy duty carnatic exploration and everyone here knows that there havent been any worth remembering in the recent times on that subject. On the WCM front - we have enough evidence to fill up a room on what he has done - his diminishing size of orchestra not withstanding. Early days of financial stress, he used synth to try out some of his experiments. I mean, synth - might not be all that ear catching, yet had all the layers intact with the notes and counterpoints and stuff like that. With the right project, one even got to hear the right balance of carnatic-WCM-Jazz blend with enough stuff of experimentation - Case in point being a movie like Ajanthaa - which was mostly done by B-listers, yet the subject of music troupe fired him up enough. So one can expand on this topic in a more general tone as why are we not making any music related movies anymore instead of blaming raaja for not trying out raagas - I mean thiraipaadal collection has a raaga collection of raaja and it very much includes some of the late 90s songs as well.. probably it is upon us to see post 2000 and catalogue - before blaming raaja for lack of variety. That way we can discover more hidden gems as well as come to a conclusion instead of trying to generalize a composer's output, which many of us have "labelled" "outdated", "lack lustre" etc., - how many of us even gave a proper listening to it?