Category: Entertainment

Oh Holy Night

“Oh Holy Night” is one of my favorite Christmas songs ever. Yesterday I was listening to different versions of this song, sung by different singers. And my most favorite ones are the following three versions:

1. Billy Gilman – Just listen to this kiddo singing so beautifully and how he handles even the high notes with ease!

2. Mariah Carey – I love this one the most for Mariah Carey’s vocal range in the higher notes, her beautiful falsettos and the choir singing in the background.

3. Celine Dion – I love this version too, for the sweet, heavenly voice that this lady has.

A Christmas Wish

If you have been listening to music blogs and music online, George Kuruvilla should be a name that you are all familiar with. This amazing singer with a unique voice has recently been chosen by singer Sonu Nigam for his song tribute to Michael Jackson called “MJ, This One’s For You“. Now George has come up with a compilation of his favorite Gospel songs in this Christmas season. Titled “A Christmas Wish“, all the songs (cover versions) are available to listen and download from his blog. Click here to listen and download the songs.

Bollywood and Indianness

I have time and again pondered over the pitiful situation that we have as Bollywood as a brand name representing Indian cinema to the world outside (just google with “bollywood+jocalling” to see my posts on this topic). For a long time, it used to be the self-styled ambassadors of Hindi cinema who keeps conducting the “Indian” film award functions outside India who are in a desperate need of selling the Bollywood brand in the name of India and Indian culture. But how would you feel when a Minister of State, who is the newest political messiah (after APJ Abdul Kalam – who also was mostly just hype) of our urban upper-middle-class babies, says this in the TED?

The fact is that Bollywood is now taking a certain aspect of Indianness and Indian culture around the globe.

Now think about the greatness of the times we are in – Bollywood being the face of not just Indian film, but also Indianness and Indian culture.

And what exactly happened to the quality of TED Talks? I think their tag line still says “ideas worth spreading”.

The Maestro Cover-up

I have high regards for composer Ilaiyaraja. Of late, however, the maestro has begun to show some sort of musical sterility in his works. There is no variety or fresh approach in his music anymore. His music doesn’t move you or excite you much these days, even in his trademark melodious tunes. Perhaps this could be one reason why A R Rahman got more popular than Ilaiyaraja, because ARR kept improvising throughout his career. Also Ilaiyaraja has been recycling his old tunes for new movies. His Hindi music scores for the films like “Cheeni Kum” and “Paa” are good examples of this.

When I heard the songs from the movie Pazhassiraja, composed by Ilaiyaraja, it did not move me a bit. Ilaiyaraja’s music for this epic movie was disappointing and average. Usually the movies directed by Hariharan would have some great songs. But this one was a huge let down.

But now the composer is blaming the lyricist over one particular song from Pazhassiraja. Ilaiyaraja said that he is dissatisfied with poet ONV Kurup’s lyrics for the film and he spoke about it at the audio release of the Tamil version of the film at Chennai.

According to the music director, ONV was unable to write the lyrics for a tune that had been selected by Hariharan, from among several tunes that Ilaiyaraja had presented before him. A few months later, the director had approached Ilaiyaraja again with lyrics that had been written by the famous lyricist, and had asked him to compose a tune for the same.

Ilaiyaraja said that the lyrics had the manner of a march past anthem. It had none of the anguish experienced by the warrior. Probably the lyricist must have had a different picture of Pazhassi in his mind, he added. [via]

I think it is up to the director and script writer to decide what kind of lyrics they want for a situation in the film. In this case, it seems that both the director and script writer do not have any problem with the lyrics penned by ONV. Then why should the composer have any issues? Or is it his way of covering up his inability to come up with a good tune for the lines that ONV wrote?

PS: The song Gum Sum from the Hindi movie Paa is a tune composed by Ilaiyaraja for an old Malayalam song (Thumpee Vaa). The original Malayalam lyrics for that song was written by ONV and most of us Malayalees listen to that song equally for it’s poetic beauty.

Update: Here is another take on the songs from Pazhassiraja.

Thank You and Good Bye

Sainoj singer

Singer Sainoj, who has sung the song “Thaamara Pookkalum” from the movie “Orkkuka Vallappozhum” (one of my most favorite songs of the recent time) has passed away yesterday. He was a winner of the musical show “Gandharva Sangeetham” in Kairali TV and has sung in a couple of Malayalam movies including Orkkuka Vallappozhum and Ivar Vivaahitharaayaal. He had the symptoms of blood cancer. May his soul rest in peace…

(Image courtesy: Nowrunning.com)

Neelathaamara

Director Lal Jose has never disappointed the Malayalam movie lovers ever since his debut. Except for twice – with films like “Pattaalam” and “Mulla” – his movies are widely accepted by the Malayalee audience. His movies are mostly set to the backdrop of a typical Kerala village and both the story and camera capture the essence and beauty of the place. The song sequence in Lal Jose movies are a visual treat and he doesn’t go out to Singapore or Switzerland to shoot for a song, yet captures the breath-taking beauty of the ordinary places/villages. His latest (though I am yet to watch it) is one of the 10 short films in the movie “Kerala Cafe” which is already a hit with Mammootty and Srinivasan doing the lead roles.

“Neelathaamara” is one of the year’s much awaited Malayalam film. Lal Jose teams up with writer M T Vasudevan Nair to do a remake of an old Malayalam film. And Malayalees have huge expectation over the film as two magicians (MT and Lal Jose) join hands for this film. The movie is taken in a very low budget. I just saw/heard one song and it has such stunning visuals. I don’t have much to praise the song though. The tune somewhat reminds us of the old popular Malayalam hit songs composed by Vidyasagar himself (what is it with music directors these days recycling the old wine?). The song reminds me too much of Vidyasagar’s early (Lal Jose film) hit “Karimizhi kuruviye kandilla”. And though it is my sweetheart Shreya Ghoshal [;-)] singing the song, the pronunciation at places were bumpy in the song. “nirayum” for “niRayum” for example. Shreya is usually so keen on the pronunciation part and has sung even much more difficult Malayalam song lines with ease (“Vida Parayukayaano” and “Chaanthu Thottille” for example), so I would blame it on the people who were in the studio for this mistake. Another bumpy thing was the over stress at “ka” in the word “akale” by the male singer. But generally it is a good melodious tune, but nothing new.

So here is “Anuraaga Vilochananaayi” mostly for the visual treat it offers. And do check out Lal Jose’s blog.

M G Sreekumar on Tamil songs

MG_sreekumarI saw this when a friend of mine pointed me to this video of an episode from the Malayalam musical reality show – Idea Star Singer. One of the contestants sang the beautiful Yesudas-Salil Chowdhury song “Shyaama Meghame” and the judges began to comment. The pointers, as usual, were based on the adherence to the original. After the famous Sangathi Man‘s comments, the voice-of-Mohan Lal came in. And he started lecturing and here it is:

“You people are addicted to the Tamil songs. Agreed that there are songs with such level of “sangathis” in Tamil, but there are no songs with such variations like we have in Malayalam. So if you try to sing this song in Tamil style, such Sangathis won’t come out.”

There is absolutely no reason to bring in Tamil music there. And if I am to believe what M G Sreekumar had said, what were music directors like Ilaiyaraja doing all these years in music? According to M G Sreekumar, none of them have done any songs with variations in Tamil yet.

Though I am scratching my head to find out the difference between the words “sangathi” and “variations”, I can’t also help thinking whether this is an out-pour of a singer who could not make his mark outside Malayalam music industry. Considering that his success in the Malayalam music industry is mainly attributed to his friend, schoolmate Mohan Lal, because their voices sounds alike, and to his friend director Priyadarshan, we have reasons to believe that he was just pouring his anger on a poor boy who came to test his luck with singing.

PS: My friend also comments that Salil Chowdhury is a Bengali and not a Malayali. So if he had the “variations” composed in Malayalam, he would sure have done it in his own language!

Blogswara on Twitter

Blogswara is now officially on Twitter! You can follow us @Blogswara for the updates.

On another note, we have received 15 song submissions for our next album (which will be out in January, 2010). The song evaluation process is to begin soon, so keep watching this space for more updates!

Is This It?

I went to see Michael Jackson’s (or I’d rather say Sony’s) “This Is It” on last Saturday with much expectation. But I was left disappointed. I brought along my 4 nephews with me, but even they were not so happy about the film/documentary. I thought I would get to see the glimpse of, to quote MJ himself, the “person, not just the personality”. But it is mostly just song and dance. Though you would initially get charged a little with some of his popular songs, the enthusiasm would soon die down as this is nothing close to what an MJ show really is (compared to what I have seen in his live show videos of course) 🙂 . You would soon lose interest in watching him sing and dance. But the movie does give us a glimpse of what a great show it could have been if “This Is It” happened. And what a great performer MJ was, organizing every single detail of the show to make it sound/seem perfect.

The movie seems to be carefully edited. You do not see a tired, sick MJ in the film like the news reports after his death mentioned. You always get to see his happy face and his enthusiastic, energetic self. Also the movie is very badly edited, as scenes fading from one to another not leaving any emotional moments or something that emotionally moves the fans or the viewers. It also ends with a weird ending, not quite a tribute to MJ, who, if given a chance, would have done this a lot better. Like many of the MJ fans have mentioned, this movie seems to have been made just to make money out of Michael Jackson’s death.

To sum it all, the movie is not worthy of watching in a theatre. Perhaps in a DVD, yes, but that is only if you are a hardcore Michael Jackson fan and can trade some bucks just to see him sing and dance.

(Image courtesy: Wikipedia)