December 2011 – Just Jo

Malayalam film songs of 2011 – My picks

2011 may not have been an exciting year for Malayalam box office, but it certainly was a turning point in the history of Malayalam film music industry. The industry had opened up to the rock music genre last year and a new trend of movie inspired OSTs had been introduced. As a result, we had a song from India’s leading and Kochi’s own rock band Motherjane for the film Anwar in 2010. The trend continued this year with the Malayalam rock band Avial played the end title song, Aanakkallan, for the film Salt N Pepper. It seems to be continuing as the audio of the end title song from the upcoming film Asuravithu, sung by the new rock sensation, X-Factor fame Piyush Kapur, is out on YouTube.

It shows that the new age film directors who target the young audience are ready to go beyond the regular track to try out something new. And the stage is set right. There has been no better time than now for the independent music scene in India and the youth in Kerala are also reaching out to different genres of music.

2011 was also the year of Shreya Ghoshal in Malayalam film music. She has probably sung more songs than Chitra in Malayalam this year. Unlike other singers from the north and south of India, she has given much effort in terms of pronunciation and that is evident from her renditions. But are the music directors trying to use her pan-Indian image for the publicity of their albums is a question. If that is the case, some of the equally talented young singers from Kerala – Gayatri, Manjari and Swetha – are missing out in the competition.

So here comes my list of top 12 Malayalam songs of 2011. You can view/hear the songs on YouTube, if you click on the song names.

Song: Naattu vazhiyorathe
Movie: Gaddhama
Singer: K S Chitra
Music: Bennet-Veetrag
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Chimmi Chimmi
Movie: Urumi
Singer: Manjari
Music: Deepak Dev
Lyrics: Kaithapram

Song: Chembarathi Kammalittu
Movie: Manikyakallu
Singer: Shreya Ghoshal, Ravishankar
Music: M Jayachandran
Lyrics: Anil Panchooran

Song: Ithile Varoo
Movie: The Train
Singer: Sujatha
Music: Srinivas
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Kannoram Chingaaram
Movie: Rathinirvedham
Singer: Shreya Ghoshal
Music: M Jayachandran
Lyrics: Murugan Kattakkada

Song: Himakanam
Movie: Violin
Singer: Gayatri, Ganesh Sundaram
Music: Bijibal
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Chembaavul
Movie: Salt N Pepper
Singer: Pushpavathy
Music: Bijibal
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Premikkumpol
Movie: Salt N Pepper
Singer: P Jayachandran, Neha Nair
Music: Bijibal
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Pranaya Nilaa
Movie: Teja Bhai and Family
Singer: Shaan Rahman
Music: Deepak Dev
Lyrics: Kaithapram

Song: Manjil Melle
Movie: Makaramanju
Singer: Yesudas
Music: Ramesh Narayanan
Lyrics: Chandran Nair

Song: Amruthamaay
Movie: Snehaveedu
Singer: Hariharan
Music: Ilaiyaraja
Lyrics: Rafeeque Ahammed

Song: Mazhaneer Thullikal
Movie: Beautiful
Singer: Unni Menon
Music: Ratheesh Vega
Lyrics: Anoop Menon

Honorable mentions:

To Reshmi Satheesh for the songs Appa Nammade and Chalanam Chalanam from the movie Urumi. The highlight of both these songs is Reshmi’s powerful voice.

To Rex Vijayan for the background score of Chaappa Kurish. Rex has given a totally different approach compared to the traditional way our musicians have been scoring music for films.

Trunk Call – song teasers posted!

We are so happy to post the song teasers from Trunk Call, the upcoming Blogswara album! Trunk Call is the first of it’s kind in the history of Blogswara as the album has a central theme of bi-lingual songs which brings in the flavors of different languages and music genres into each song.

Contrary to the previous albums of Blogswara (earlier, Blogswara let itself to be the platform for ready-to-publish songs so people could send in what they had ready at hand), we had asked the song teams to work on a central theme that required each song to have a minimum of two languages. The theme stands close to the very basic principle of Blogswara, which is to unite people from different places using music as the medium to communicate. Even though we had received 19 song teams announcing their participation, only 6 song teams had submitted the songs out of which only 4 could make it to the final list. So we thank all the 4 song teams who took an extra effort to create new songs based on the given theme.

So here it comes, the song teasers from the upcoming album. Listen, share and show some love! 🙂 The new album will go live online (need I say that the entire album is free to listen and download?) on January 1st, 2012. So stay tuned for the full versions!

Responsible journalism – New Indian Express style

500 TN women workers rescued from Kerala border, said the news headlines of The New Indian Express daily on December 7th, 2011. Then it went on to say,

In one of the worst incidents of mob frenzy over the ongoing Mullaiperiyar dam safety row, nearly 500 women estate workers from Tamil Nadu were held hostage and some of them allegedly sexually harassed in Idukki district in Kerala on Monday. [link]

This is from the Tamil Nadu edition of the newspaper and reported by someone named Gokul Vannan. As expected, several attacks were followed and directed towards Malayalees in Chennai and Coimbatore. Many Malayalee shops were targeted including Joy Alukkas and K R Bakers in Chennai. Malayalee shop owners in Chennai and Coimbatore are feared for their lives. All because of the news that churned out from a rumor.

The ‘reporter’ obviously must be aware of the tension that exists between Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the name of Mullaperiyar dam. Water is a big issue for the neighbor and compared to an average Malayalee, an average Thamizhan has fairly good respect to women (this of course is valid as long as the women stick to the traditional norms – remember how actress Khushboo had a temple built in her name and then it was brought down to earth when she commented on pre-marital sex?). So any common man can assume the gravity of the issue when the news of Thamizh women being assaulted by Malayalees in the name of Mullaperiyar dam comes to the front. Then why can’t a ‘news reporter’ consider that aspect and treat the news right?

The ~~funny~~ bloody thing is that there was no such incident. There was no such report in the Thamizh and Malayalam regional TV channels. An activist online friend checked with several Malayalam and Thamizh news papers – including The Times of India, The Hindu, Dinamani, Dinakaran, Dinathanthi, Malayala Manorama and Mathrubhoomi – but couldn’t find any source that said so.

From his Google Plus page:

When I contacted Idukki Collector on this issue through a reliable source, I came to know that it was a full-length fabricated story. (Idukki Collector: E Devadasan, ph: 09447032252).

Later, I contacted a friend of mine who is the welfare officer of a tea plantation in Idukki. From his words, I could understand that about 95 percent of the people working in the plantations there were from Tamil Nadu who are still continuing their work.

When I asked about the report to my counterparts in Kerala, I understood that even the Kerala editions of The New Indian Express have not carried the mentioned report.

This is one person who took the effort to confirm the news using his contacts. But our national media houses, CNN-IBN and NDTV, did not take the pain to do a fact check and republished the story with crediting the source to Express News Service.

This is the sad state of affairs with our media. And not an apology, not a word, yet, from either The New Indian Express or from IBN Live and NDTV.