Month: January 2013

“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.

Religion / spirituality as a paid service

The other day I was reading the news of Sri (x 2) Ravi Shankar’s satsang in Alappuzha in Kerala, where he was asked by the journalists his opinion on selling/marketing spirituality (Ravi Shankar was accused of commercializing spirituality by a Communist leader in Kerala). He said that he was indeed selling/marketing spirituality, yoga and ‘Indian culture’. I was astonished that he admitted this openly. But in the very next sentence (as reported by Mathrubhumi daily) he said that the profit he gets from this business is ‘smiles’ from the people and not money. That was a huge let down. I mean, why are the spiritual gurus, religious heads etc hesitant to admit that they are providing a service which we have to pay them? We all know that is the reality but why wouldn’t they admit it and why the word ‘money’ is so evil to them when they have no qualms in receiving it in loads?

Let me tell you about another incident. This is from the last weekend, on January 5th on my second brother’s 16th death anniversary. I had paid for some spiritual services for that day about a month ago in our parish for which I got the receipt (as per the rule I should show the receipt before the service is done or I would be denied the service, even in a possible case of misplacing the receipt). When I got there with my entire family (all of us would get together every year on that date for the service and thereafter for breakfast and lunch in my house) I’d found out that the second morning mass was canceled for that day. The cancellation was announced a week ago on a Sunday, but I did not go to the church that Sunday. But my booking was done about three weeks ago and nobody in the parish office notified me on this. So there were three services for which I had paid and I was ready to let go off two as a compromise. But the parish vicar denied me these services. He said I could choose one of the three services which he would decide, but I wasn’t ready to accept it. I told him that I was ready to let go the other two but one must take place because the entire family had come for this day and this special service and it cannot be postponed.

I also told the priest that I had paid for these services, which got him furious. Furious to a level that he even threatened that “I will show you” for which I responded “let’s see”. I don’t understand this. Why get furious for mentioning money? Especially when there is a practice that the priests would do the special services only upon presenting the original payment receipts? If they are so ashamed of the mention of money, or if money is so evil, then why demand the pay?

There are a couple of things that people who practice religion can and should do about this. First, remove the ‘holy’ or ‘divine’ element when you demand these services, as long as you are paying for it. Respond to the priests just as they respond to you; you wouldn’t find ‘holiness’ in the way that most of them, like our parish priest, speaks. Then demand the service as you would in case of any other paid services in this world. And, I am not sure if it already is and if not, bring the spiritual/religious services under the consumer court. A first step to deal with this this kind of issues is for the spiritual/religious heads to admit that they indeed make money (and not just smiles) out of special spiritual/religious services, and then the believers/consumers should see it as yet another paid consumer service (with a ‘divine’ element if you’d like, of course).

What can you do?

The Delhi rape and the subsequent outrage against it has prompted many responses. Responses which looked at the issue as a problem of ‘the other’ and never ours. Some of those comments which came from the religious gurus and communal organizations have been so weird. So more than the candle-light vigils and placard-holding rallies (I’m not undermining the importance of collective responses though), what is the least thing we can do about the issues like this or the root cause of it all – gender equality? We speak about it at length, but what do we do about it, starting from our own families?

So here is a questionnaire/check list that we can use to see how we are scaling ourselves. We need not publish the answers for the public, but just think about it for ourselves. This is just an initial step, but still would be a good beginning.

– do you do your own laundry?
– do you iron your own clothes?
– do you serve your own food?
– do you do your part in cleaning the floors?
– do you do your part in other house-chores?
– do you do your part in parenting?
– do you do all of the above when you are living with the womenfolk in your family, and not just when you live alone?
– do you do all these by ‘favor’ or by a feeling of equal responsibility?

 

Good riddance, 2012!

Every new year brings with it the hope of doing something new or going to back to doing something you have been doing and the hope for a better life. But 2012 was not a great year at all. One good thing from 2012 was to see some friends and fellow Blogswaraites debuting in the mainstream music industry. More power to them and music.

There has been so much negativity all around the last year. Blame it on the system, government, people, media or yourself/myself. There were ‘movements’ that didn’t move anything at all. From Hazare through Ramdev to others. Short-sighted people with vested interests banking upon sentiments of the common man and the common man happily playing into the hands of them gave them both the obvious results. Media however benefited largely from these circuses.

Seeing all this, I feel I should shut down the computer, go off the Twitter/Facebook radar and listen to music, eyes and ears shut to the outer world. But how long? This moment or the other, this very system, people, government or media is going to grab me at my feet and toss me away. One can never escape from his environment.

So here is to hoping for a better year or the years to come in both personal and social life. Happy New Year everyone.