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Vijay, I'm sorry if my casual remark (with a smily ofcourse) hurt you...It was just an inference...it's true you never said so...however, I do sometimes get a thrill out of vimarsanam:-))
It's really something that people can get so much emotionally attached to the profession of IR, and really feel for him:-)
"I personally dont credit that as absolute truth but for all I know, this might be his real philosophy - the creative flourishes we identify and enjoy in Devar magan may all be just spontaneous for him."
Rajdes, no its not. With Kamal and IR its a different ball game. Include MR,KB too. Andhi mazhai's final tune was selected after 27 attempts (of course Kamal picked the first one after listening to all the 27 tunes). I guess even R. Sundarraajan works on his songs with IR. There are probably a few instances where IR got what the director wanted in his first try itself. Even for the latest mallu film, whose recording sessions are included with the song the director says that IR tried 3 tunes and the director picked one.
Its only for those paadavathi Vijaykanth/Sathyaraj movies listed above made by some unknown directors that IR just gets the first tune off of his tired head and asks the director to either keep it or leave his place. Or he comes out with equally medicore 7 tunes or so from which the director HAS to pick one. I know for a fact that this has happened many times. Even IR has admitted to boredom in TFM and that has amply reflected in his songs.
"In his perception, probnably he doesnt do it consciously. If that is so, it is hardly right of us to criticize that. "
Whether he does it consciously or not might be a moot point. The point is there were innumerable number of "bad" songs or songs where it was obvious that much thought has'nt been put into the process. And not co-incidentally most of those songs have been from bad films/directors a sample of which I have listed above. Whether he did that intentionally is just speculation. But based on his own interviews and from some others in the industry whom I have heard and spoken to in the past, there were many films where he showed blatant disinterest. (I dont buy that he was compelled to do those films and so on, especially with the power he had in the 80s. Also big MDs before and after him have been more selective or even if they werent, have given their best to a higher percentage of films than IR did in the 80s)
"If the latter is of lesser quality in our perception, how can he be blamed for giving less attention to the latter"
For someone who has good exposure to music, has been listening to TFM, IR and other music for along time this distinction can be made(between a medciore product and a creative attempt)with a certain amount of confidence. . Otherwise you could end up arguing that all of SA Rajkumar's songs are as great as IRs and its only in OUR perception that their songs sound different in quality :-)) I agree to a certain extent that its subjective. But in many instances the distinction is not that blurred, atleast to me. There is probably a reason as to why all the songs from those films I listed above were neither criticaly acclaimed nor were commercial successes nor do even hardcore IR fans remember them.
"IMO, we should drop this question of %'s of good songs etc. Just enjoy his flourishes. "
I do enjoy his flourishes. But its just my angst that a composer of his creativity could have cut down on those bad projects which would have made his overall resume look even more impressive, taking a cue from his predecessors. Right now, someone could even argue that in order to give 1 good song in the late 80s, IR had to give 5 bad ones. Its like as if he needed 6 tries to get it right.
tmrrmt, you could email the doc to RR(admin). He will probably link to it at the beginning of this thread. You could also email that to me, actually I appreciate that. I am trying to write a series/article on 'What to look for in the music of IR'. This will help me.
"Right now, someone could even argue that in order to give 1 good song in the late 80s, IR had to give 5 bad ones. Its like as if he needed 6 tries to get it right."
This is probably the case, who knows. IR does not seem to know how a song becomes a hit or atleast wants to. He just does, what he feels like at that moment. He probably did it for money, he probably did it for being the 'numero uno' or monopoly. He probably did it to prove that a lowly guy form a village can do film music whether it is folk, classical or modern. He probably did it to spite all those who probably insulted him in his early part of the career or who still try these things through some media. Whoever claimed IR is a paragon of all virtues or an ideal human ?. He just happens to be a really really good MD, in my books. I am sometimes even happy that he did so many films, even though it is frustrating to fast forward some songs (especially when on LPs :-( ). Because at the end of the day (or period ?) we have so many songs worth listening to again and again after culling out the so called 'crap'. This sort of music (in format and structure) is not )available elsewhere (or from other current MDs). And we also have a MD who is capable do doing bigger/structured works in WCM format (for bgm etc). This is not possible without having all that work experience. It is all a skill and genius is 99% perspiration, right ?.
I agree with vijayr 100% - IR's qulaity was going down in the late1980s.
I guess IR preferred to work in Ramarajan/Rajkiran type of movies becase he probably enjoyed the importance he got in their movies. (I remember seeing lot of Ramarajan movie posters featuring only IR – he cannot expect the same in BR or KB movies). Basically these people were just trying cash-on IR's popularity, so they probably accepted whatever tunes IR gave. Most of plots were also very simple; they did not pose much challenge to IR. He could have always redirected the traffic to people like GA and Deva.
vijayr reminds me of one Nakkeeran's dialogue from "Thiruvilaiyaadal" (roughly translated) I am the one who gets very happy to see quality, and at the same time I am the who one gets very angry to see crap.....
njv - you can not stamp someone "Thankless" just because he is a critic. I also love raja's music, but I can not be a HCIRF like some other people in this forum. To some extend these people are responsible for the degeneration of quality... the focus shall be on the "music", not on the "person". They get transfixed on the "person" somuch, they forget "music".
Kiru, I agree to a certain extent with your points. Its just my wish that rather than gaining work experience by accepting those kind of films he could have consolidated/compiled all musical ideas which came to him spontaneously(and which he thinks were good) but werent used in films or specifically sit down and compose some serious pieces like say HTNI and release them. Or atleast do more devotional albums along the lines of Ramana maalai/Guru Ramana geetham and so on. Even if he had limited himself to just KB/Manirathnam/Kamal/Fazil/Balumahendra/RV Udayakumar he would have had atleast 10-15 films/year(in TFM alone).Another 5-10 movies say, in Telugu/Malayalam. Rest of the time could have been spent on something more creative. There's only so much that he can gain from working on a Ramarajan or Vijaykanth film. As IR himself had said once his attempt to do HTNI or NBW was to "dust himself" off from time to time. Dust that had accumulated from years of working on paadavathi films. But in the end, I guess he was the kind of personality who couldnt firmly say a no to those who tried to cache in on his name. Maybe that was his weakness. As an IR fan you sometimes feel let down a bit when you see a lot of sub-par songs from a composer whom you respect. But so far, thats been my ONLY grouse with IR.
His positives still outweigh everything else by a huge margin.
Vijayr,
The Paadaavathi movies or dhandams you are talking about are mostly by newcomers or a director waiting for a break. since it has happened for many directors that IR's music had proven for them to be successful, these people too would have gone to IR for the same purpose. remember IR was considered lucky and at a period of time he singing the title song was considered Auspicious. Most of these people come from villages to make it big in films and IR should have had a soft corner for them as he too was struggling once upon a time like them. But they were not competent enough in bringing out IR in his best. hence they, the movie and songs failed miserably.
I dont see anything wrong in Ramarajan,Rajkiran movies, whats so grouse in those songs :?
Vijaykanth- i accept but for movies like Sathriyan, captain prabhakaran, bharathan, Chinna gounder etc., most of his movies were craps.
Any way you have comeup with the final statement i believe :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by vijayr
vijayr,
I think I can see your point and angst. Hell, I share that angst :-). My point is when the man is so indifferent to it, why we should(read you should) waste so much time explaining to people why a lot of crap came out from his baton. See ?;-)
Bottomline is, IR decided to do his share of crap films for one or more of the many reasons outlined by Kiru and perhaps some more too. As a listener,we can definitely crib at the man's lack of selectivity but beyond that, he has his own reasons. Like I said, once we start on that line of questioning his choices, I can even go so far as like "why did he marry and waste his time on samsara sagaram - he could have used that time to produce more quality music? " ;-)
That would be going nowhere. This is IR. Johnny is as much part of him as Pickpocket. He has been both artisan and artist. [/i] Some people love him for being an artisan and infact, reject the artist in him!! [/i]
That being the case, I could even interpret his mediocre output as a gift to his mediocre listeners(though there are absolute craps with no audience, I agree. You wouldnt believe this, I know people who love IR only for the aatha songs of Rajkiran and Ramarajan movies!)
Personally, that aspect of IR is what fascinates me - I know many people who identify IR with a specific type of music and reject all his other aspects and still are mad fanatics of him. That includes , as I said, hardcore Aatha song fanatics, purely telugu dabba song fanatics and 70's IR songs fanatics etc
It always reminds me of the 5 blind men and elephant story -each perceiving an elephant according to the part he touched and felt!
I understand IR has becime a fav punch bag for many. It is not as if MSV is an angel. That his quality nosedived after the parting of
VR combination is well known. He has infact more craps to his discredit than IR. Iam one of those unfortunate few who suffered many junks from MSV in the name of host of films Mangala vaadhyangal, Porter ponnuswamy , kALTHOON etc to name a few in the late 70's which had not even single song worthy of listening. If we can gloat over the melodies of MSV, we can also gloat over those of IR.
I dont know why we are getting dragged into IR's failures instead of the his style of composing and orchestrating which the title of the thread seem to suggest.
Art is highly subjective. Case in point is the mother sentiment songs that someone brought out. Someone even went to the extent of trashing all Ramarajan and Rajkiran movies and IR's music in them. I can clearly see that those people are easily taken in by the "sound quality" and orchestration and forget that every work of art at the end of the day must reflect the culture and thoughts of the land to which it belongs. IR's western classical also will have the thamizh ethnic feel in it.
Classic example was the "Do Anything" piece from How to name it. It had a grand western classical opening and soon shehnaai more like the nayyandi naadhasuram (a pipe instrument which I call pee pee :lol:) joins in a rustic thamizh naadu feel note. I was thrilled to hear an instrument used by the most simple folk instrumentalist find a place along with grand flow of violins and flutes. It was IR's way of elevating the sound of the land he came from to a grand scale where it merged with music from other instruments which "people" generally see as grand and "Stylish". There are many friends of mine who thought that the musical piece had been spoiled by the use of the "ethnic" instrument. They said that the rest of the world will not accept such experiments. They were soon surprised as the unbiased western ears to whom I played this music loved the new sound. I realized then that the lowly attitude that we have is to be blamed if IR's music hasn't reached all corners of the globe. As a contrast there have been many of y friends who were disappointed and surprised with the lack of enthusiasm from strangers to the music of a different creator whose musical forms they(my friends) thought was more western and of high quality and therefore automatically appealing to them (the strangers or westerners).
To relate to Rajkiran movies, the two movies he directed might not have had the subtlety of an "alai paayudhe", but it had emotions of the natives captured in an efficient manner and vocalised by IR. I loved it like millions of other thamizhars which seems to be come as a huge surprise to the many intellectuals that haunt this forum. My expectation from IR is not to concentrate only on carnatic-Jazz-WCM-blues fusion. My expectation from IR is to take the soul of the land he comes from in a vehicle of fusion which he has PERFECTED like no one else to the whole world. If Thiruvaasagam is the first step, then I am waiting to go the full journey with his music, no matter how "un fresh" or "repeated " it would seem to many. To harp on this I would like to narrate a couple of incidents which I will continue in subsequent posts.....
to be continued....
Incident #1.
I recently bought an album "Six pieces of silver" a collection of Jazz pieces by Horace silver a renowned Jazz guru. It was recommended by a jazz buzz friend of mine. I bought the CD and played it. It had 10 tracks that all sounded the same. I liked all the 10 pieces even though there was very little variations. I asked my friend to explain this lack of variety and "Freshness". He explained to me that jazz performances are live and not arranged and recorded. It is a mood of the mind and the music flows in the same vein as it would flow from a cut- vein. The goal is to reach a "bluey" mood and stay in it as long as possible with the music being a tool to set the mood. The key is , if the mood is attained, then even slight variations in the wind of the players will get the listener jump in joy. Thankfully I was not pre conditioned to get 6 different tunes, or else I would have thrown the amazing music album to the dust bins. I find that many listeners are preconditioned when they listen to IR's music. Some want him to keep importing the latest arranging computers and reprogramming rhythms all the night in the name of composing songs. There was one "critic" who was terribly displeased with the use of "tabla" in IR's songs. No not with the quality of tabla, but the Tabla itself. Well what can one say about these people and how can you weigh the genius of a man based on the words of such "critics"!!!
Incident #2.
I was lost one day while getting back to my home (I was new to the area). As a feeling of panic was gripping me from all sides, I heard "Shenbagame Shenbagame" drifting in the air reassuring me . As I walked in the direction of the flow of music, I stopped near a small makeshift hut of a construction worker where a tape recorder (of the very famous "tea kadai" quality- which cannot play back the compositions of modern music director with good quality) was playing the song while the construction worker and his family were having their dinner. I chatted with him for a while on various things including the song that was being played. Later on this gentleman helped me to find my way back home. I really enjoyed that "home coming".