Just Jo – Page 9 – Just being myself

No Urdu, please. And no Hindi too.

Urdu, I heard, is a beautiful language. I don’t understand it though, but those who have dealt with it, like a lyricist friend of mine, have always praised the language for it’s beauty. But Urdu has always seemed strange to me. A language that sounds like Hindi, yet if written looks like Arabic.

What seemed stranger to me was when people like Justice Katju who is known to have been outspoken and union minister Kapil Sibal battling for the language so much so that they even suggested that it should be taught in schools. It is true that Sanskrit and Urdu have had the fate of being associated with religion and thus keeping some sections of people away from them as Justice Katju had rightly put at an Urdu poetry symposium. But is teaching these languages compulsorily in the schools throughout the country the solution? I don’t think so.

We are already being taught Hindi compulsorily in the name of raashTRa bhaasha, which is of no use to us at all. For somebody who comes from the non-Hindi speaking region in India (and there are many non-Hindi regions in India), learning Hindi is useless. I have learned Hindi from 5th standard onwards, but the language is of no use to me now. I don’t even remember the words or grammar that I learned in the school because it never made to the daily use. I speak Malayalam and I use English at the personal and work spaces. What purpose does Hindi learning serve to a non-Hindi speaker if he is not living in the Hindi speaking part of the country? (And now they are teaching Hindi from 1st standard onwards!). Any language other than the native language and English should be treated as an optional subject in schools. Why make compulsory?

So what I would like to tell Justice Katju and Kapil Sibal is that we are already fed up of the compulsory mode of Hindi in our schools and it’s cultural invasion into our regional space. Please don’t push more as such down our throats. Make it optional if you want but not compulsory. And when you do that, take out Hindi too. It only helps in understanding Hindi movies but even that can be dealt with the subtitled DVDs.

Every great thing must come to an end

They say every good thing must come to an end. So must Blogswara. Yes, we are going to put a full stop to our project after 6 years, 7 albums, 65 songs and a whole new bunch of amazing singers, lyricists, composers, orchestrators and mixing engineers.

Interestingly, we’d never thought past a single music album. Those were the good old days of music blogging and many singers were just beginning to find their listener base online. We thought of bringing all these musicians together under one umbrella and that too, to create a set of original songs and music. Thus was born our first album. And that was four months before Facebook opened up to public.

The journey went on. What we thought would come to an end after the first two albums had kept going on strong and in the meanwhile new platforms were born. A whole new world of social media exposure was waiting for the artists to explore them. Still, we went strong. We produced seven music albums. We inspired people and similar projects/websites. It is truly a moment of pride. But over the years, the momentum was slowing down. There are richer and easily accessible platforms that handle the publishing and sharing aspects easier than ever, like Facebook or YouTube.

That was obvious and inevitable, by the way. You don’t have to get stuck in time with a project that was a need of the hour when there was none but to continue to do it when there are better platforms does not make sense. Now if there is an amateur singer who wants to make his voice heard in the public can create a network through social media and make himself heard. We realize that and it is one reason that we are leaving for good.

We are proud to see that some of the artists whom we had introduced through Blogswara have made it big in the mainstream. Divya S Menon has made her mark with the song “Anuraagam” in the Malayalam movie “Thattathin Marayatthu”. Shyam, Praveen and Prasanna of TSJ Studio have made their debut in the Tamil film music industry with the album “Kamban Kazhagam”. Praveen Lakkaraju, Sreenivas Josyula and Sindhuja Bhaktavatsalam made their entry into Telugu music industry with the movie album “Hormones”. Sunny Sanour made his entry as a music director to Telugu music industry with the songs in the Telugu film “Swamy Ra Ra”. We are so happy and proud of these wonderful musicians.

Blogswara is a project that is so close to my heart. The project had taught me that regardless of many differences – regional, linguistic, caste, creed, religious, political etc – people can come together to create something that will make everyone rejoice in music. Most of us have still not seen each other or spoken to each other, yet we have built a relationship strongly rooted in music that continues to the date. It is music that binds us all, which is why I chose the tagline “United in Music” for Blogswara.

Personally too, Blogswara has helped me learn many things. The early lessons of leadership and organization, the pains and pleasure of it, came through Blogswara. I can proudly say that I have never succumbed to the pressures that would compromise the very founding principles of Blogswara. There were times when the pressure was mounted up on me to bring in the commercial aspect to Blogswara, or to bring in the religious fervor to it through the songs but I have resisted all that. I would rather see Blogswara vanish to thin air than deviating from it’s founding principles. Of the free/open music culture with CC licensing and the secular nature of the project. Of bringing in people of diverse cultures and languages in an effort to appreciate music. I can proudly say that I have been successful in that.

Another moment of pride was when Jessica Keyes, a student of Department of Music in University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada chose music blogging with a primary focus on BlogSwara for her academic defense. Her paper titled “Blogging Music: Indian Musicians and Online Musical Spaces” presented an ethnography of the Indian music blogging community and a critical analysis of the historical and technological foundation for music blogging.

There are so many people to thank. Narayanan Venkitu and Ajith Gopalakrishnan to start with. Senthil (Sen) for the spark of Blogswara. Ganesh D for the name Blogswara. Abdul Shafeeq for the initial art work and CD covers. Gopal M S for the name ‘Trunk Call’. Murali Krishnan of Connexions, Chennai for the initial support. Jyothis E for the continued support with web space through many albums. Nandu Mahadevan for bringing in a process in place. Roshan Ravi for the cover art of Blogswara’s album ‘Trunk Call’. Legendary Tamil writer Sujatha for his piece in Vikatan, Karthika Thampan of Manorama News, Asha Anilkumar of Indian Express, Shilpa Nair Anand of The Hindu, K Santhosh of The Hindu, Anita Iyer and Aparna Joshi of Sound Box Magazine, Sankar Radhakrishnan of Business Line, B S Biminith of Mathrubhumi, Deccan Radio, Poornima for Radio Mirchi Chennai coverage and bloggers like Amit Verma, Kiruba and Neha Vishwanathan of Global Voice Online etc. And many thanks to all Blogswara participants and member without whom this project would never have happened.

And thanks to you, our listeners, who have encouraged us and helped us grow. We will still be online if you wanted to hear our songs again. It has been a great ride and it couldn’t have gotten better. Peace and music to all!

The height of Mohan Lal and Mammootty

I go though my site stats occasionally and come across some interesting keywords from time to time. Last week’s site statistics has a few of those as listed below. Check ’em out.

what is the height of mohan lal and mammootty
is it possible to go to jail by watching porn
why sreekandan nair left asianet
can an individual be punished in india for only watching porn
do you go to jail for watching porn on the internet
is there an issue watching adult porn on internet
ilayaraja arrogance
i hate semmangudi

Pity those poor souls whom Google had directed to my website for these keywords.

Give them their fair share

Rang De Basanti was a hit musical in India and the songs from the album were massively popular. Among the songs was one soulful melodious song called “Lukka Chuppi“, sung by A R Rahman and the legendary Lata Mangeshkar. Google the song name and you get two YouTube video results at the top. The first one is posted by the film production company UTV Motion Pictures and the second by the user “pradipsoman”. Checkout the stats of this second song and it’s almost half the hits that the official video has got – 493,710 viewers.

This is a cover version of the song sung by playback singer Pradip Somasundaran and Kuhoo Gupta. Go through the comments section of the video and you get to see people commenting that the ‘cover’ version has outdone the original. But despite being hugely popular, the singers Pradip and Kuhoo cannot earn a dime off their half a million strong viewership because they do not hold the ‘worldwide distribution rights to everything in the video’. Go further and search for the user George Kuruvilla in YouTube. George has at least two YouTube videos which have crossed the 200,000 mark. Yet, George too cannot make a penny because of the same YouTube rules.

World over people like Pradip and George produce music videos with so much effort. Some of them, like Justin Bieber, do get lucky but luck that is. They spend money on studio-quality microphones, recording software and other gear, they record themselves and do many takes and retakes to put it to perfection and they also do the job of mixing and mastering the track. These professional and not-any-less-than-a-professional musicians deserve to earn for all their hard work, yet YouTube and the music industry turn their back on them when it comes to internet revenue sharing based on AdSense.

Why talk about revenue sharing, the industry does not let you post your cover versions even without any commercial interest. Several tracks of the users in the websites like 4shared and Soundcloud are being moved offline or blocked by citing the lack of copyright ownership or the copyright claim by some label/agency. This is when the cover artists have given the original credits where it is due. What is next? You can’t even hum a favorite song of yours without prior approval from music labels?

So, the cover artists also need to be paid for their work. Perhaps YouTube and the music industry should come in terms where a percentage of the AdSense income from these music videos would go to the original copyright owner/music label and a percentage that originally would have gone to the original singers, recordists and mixing engineers would go to the cover artist and his/her team. That is not asking for too much, that is just asking for their fair share, for all the work that goes into a home-recording song production.

Funerals

Attending a funeral is something that I dread almost all times. The situation demands you to pretend that you are sharing the grief of the loved ones of the deceased, when you know that you cannot share someone’s grief by just attending a ceremony. I hate doing it but I know that I must do it, as is the societal norm. The biggest part of the funerals is pretension.

It is sort of interesting to observe people in such situations. At a funeral, your sorrow, or the pretension of it, depends on the others. You look at the others and observe what face they are putting up and accordingly make up yours. You observe those who come and go and wonder why a stranger looks more sad and why a family member of the deceased doesn’t look so sad. Later, it could even become a talk of the town that the family of the deceased did not cry out loudly and what could be the reason behind it. And if some family did cry out loud, the same lot would say that they were so ‘village-ish’.

Then there are some ‘special’ people. People who would be ranting on how strong a relationship they have had with the deceased and how much the deceased meant to them. More often this rant is just to convince the others of how much they meant to the deceased so as to indirectly say how special they are compared to the rest. The more famous the deceased is, the more the numbers in this lot would be.

Funerals are also about numbers. If you miss attending a funeral, you would be offending the family of the deceased no matter how good or supportive you have been to the dead when they were alive. You gotta be there. At the end of the funeral or after a few days, it would be the numbers that matter to the family of the deceased. The grandness of the ceremony is defined by the total number of people and V.I.P.s attended the function.

What funerals are not about, at many a times, is the deceased.

Estuary Islands

We had a team outing to Estuary Island Resort, at Poovar in Trivandrum. It was a sunny and clear day out there and the place, where the backwaters and the sea meet, is a photographer’s delight. Here are some pics from the evening.

Estuary Island Resort

“Kadal” – music review

Ever since the first single of A R Rahman’s latest offering “Kadal” was out through MTV Unplugged, the expectation on the album was so high and Rahman kept on to the fan frenzy. And as the popular saying goes, Rahman seems to do his best when he work with ace director Mani Ratnam. “Kadal” is a fantastic mix of a variety of music genres and some top-notch singers. The album has seven tracks.

If “Aaromale” was the surprise element of “Vinnai thaandi varuvaaya”, then the song “Adiye” is the gem of this album. Sid Sriram’s powerful vocals would take you deep into the song instantly. Though set on the Blues sound, you can also hear some folkish elements clearly in it.

“Chithirai Nilaa” starts off with a new born’s voice effects which would take you back to some of the old works of A R Rahman, particularly one of the songs in “Bombay”. The song is a soft, soothing number registered safely with the vocals of Vijay Yesudas.

A R Rahman has sung “Elay Keechan” which has a country flavor to the song. The foot-thumping orchestration and vocal harmony in the background coupled with Rahman’s voice makes the song an instant favorite. Perfect fit for a happy ride outside.

Abhay Jodhpurkar and Harini have sung “Moongil Thottam” which is yet another pleasing, soothing track in the album. The guitars, strings and the beautiful voices of the singers would make you sway your heads to the tune.

“Anbin Vaasale” is a power-packed performance of singer Haricharan and the Chennai Chorale. The sounds of church bells tolling makes this a perfect devotional song set in the Gospel music feel.

“Magudi Magudi” is a racy track, set in the lines of a club song. There is nothing much about this track except that it sets a party mood perhaps was meant to enhance the visuals which we would know only when we watch the movie.

The icing of the cake is certainly “Nenjukkulle” sung by Shakthisree Gopalan. The song feels just like a cool breeze on a bright Sunday morning. The strings, percussion coupled with the beautiful vocals of Shakthisree makes the song certainly the best of the album.

To sum it up, “Kadal” proves Rahman’s ability to take any genre and easily fuse it with language that he deals with (last time we saw it when he did “Aaromale”).

(Image courtesy: The Hindu)

The year of 3, and 3

2013 is the year of number 3 in my life. This month end will mark the 3rd year of my marriage and by end of the year my son will be 3. The bigger 3 of them all though, is today as I just turned 33 years old.

Personally, last year was the most unproductive year of my life ever since I got in to music blogging. I have lost interest in doing the karaoke songs and with the little one around, it has been tough to record anything without his ‘music’ accompanying. But I realized that doing karaokes is my only option to keep singing, so I might be getting back to it this year whenever I can. I have also taken some personal resolutions which I intend to stick on to in this year, just to test myself and see how strong I am as a person. As I struggle to keep on to some of it, I realize how fragile I am or how fragile we all, the humans, are. But I will do my best. There is no fun in giving up.

The white strands of hair that was spotted on my beard last year have found a few more friends this year. Pure white, not even grey. I know these guys are growing in numbers and soon will occupy the entire area. Increasing weight was a concern last year but I could bring it under control by the end of the year. Lost about 3 kilos and am happy about that. Small things, but it makes you happy to know that you are still the chief-in-charge of your body.

But what is it really about a birthday? It’s not really about looking back or forward (there are many other occasions in life that makes you do that). It’s not even about the numbers. It’s just another reason to celebrate, yet you don’t know what you are celebrating. The march so far or the march forward? I think it is the ‘marching’ in itself that we should be celebrating. That’s the pure beauty of life – living, right now. It ain’t worth stopping.

Enough of crap for this day. I will stop now.

Madhan Karky’s ‘Lyric Engineering’

Remember the A R Rahman song “Irumbile oru idhaiyam” from the Rajnikanth movie “Robot”? What if someone told you that the lyrics of that song was actually ‘generated’ by a software? Can’t happen, right? But you’ve got to believe. The lyricist Madhan Karky uses a software to key in a tune and the software returns fresh and suitable words that would fit the given music pattern, mood of the song and the song situation. The software was developed by Madhan himself, who is an assistant professor of Computer Science in Anna University. This young man is also the son of Tamil lyricist Vairamuthu, and has no qualms in admitting that he is not a poet and you need not be a poet to write lyrics.

Watch this video where Madhan explains the process of ‘Lyric Engineering’ at TedxYouth Chennai and get amazed. And then go listen to the song he has penned (or rather generated :)) for Mani Rathnam – A R Rahman team’s latest offering “Kadal”. A truly mind-blowing innovation.