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Musical Philosophy of
Raja – Part 4 : Rhythm
is emotion
Posted onSeptember 26 by raaga_suresh
(Raja with the Hungarian Jazz drummer, Ferenc Nemeth, who played
drums for NEPV)
‘Sruthi Mata, Layam Pitha’ is the saying. Sruthi being the mother
and layam being the father. In Indian film music, as in music of
many parts of the world, rhythm plays an important part. At the
same time, in our film music, rhythm has mainly been used mostly
to keep the interest intact. Rhythm is probably the easiest way to
capture a layman’s attention and various rhythmic patterns get
used to ensure the listener is immediately hooked to the tune. Some
music directors also experiment with the thalam, using different
rhythmic cycles in their songs. Yet, I would say not many have really
explored the possibility of rhythm being part of the emotion. Raja
explored this the most. His philosophy seems to be that in certain
cases, rhythm carries as much emotion as the melody does. The
rhythm instruments are used to convey as much emotion as the
strings, wood and brass instruments.
Let me first start with the way Raja uses rhythm to convey passion.
Ofcourse there have lot of songs of passion in Indian film music.
‘roop tera mastana’, ‘masaka masaka cheekatilo’ and so on. When it
concerns passion, Raja ensures there is no steady rhythm. This is to
reflect the turmoil in the heart. Passion makes people lose their
equanimity and this is reflected in the rhythm. Additionally Raja also
chooses an asynchronous ‘nadai’ for these songs, like the kanda
nadai, where the beat is broken not into a steady rhythm of 4
syllables but as 2+3 syllables.
Here are a few examples. The first one, ‘ponmeni urugudhey’ from
‘Moonram Pirai’
Not only the rhythm very unsteady, you have the rhythm being
shared by two different instruments, adding to the unsteadiness.
The whole rhythm pattern is like the heart beat of the woman who is
singing.
The tune pe se flows smoothly but the rhythm is like the palpitations
of a passionate heart, totally unexpected and unsteady.
You can go on giving more such examples for this. the famous one
everyone would talk about would be ‘om namaha’ from ‘Geetanjali’
(Telugu)
Compared to other songs, this was probably a more obvious one but
Raja give such a wonderful tune along with outstanding
orchestration that the song doesn’t become gimmicky but becomes
a classic.
The tune per se, conveys passion but the rhythm here doesn’t
become unsteady. Rather the way it is played, you know that
something funny is going on. A lot of the fun aspect of this song
comes from the rhythm.
Next we will look at how Raja deals with unrequited passion. ‘azhagu
malar aada’ from ‘Vaidhehi Kaathirundal’
While the choice of ragam and Janaki’s superb singing give you the
pathos needed for the situation, it is Raja’s choice of the kanda
nadai which enables to complete the emotion. The sadness of the
tune is married to the passion of the rhythm and that ensures the
emotion of the situation is perfectly conveyed to us.
Not only sadness, Raja doesn’t want to overpower you with melody.
So he counters it with a strong rhythm. In ‘alli ilam poove’ from
‘Mangalum Nerunnu’. No one would think of using a harsh
instrument for a lullaby. Except Raja that is.
You don’t even have to hear the tune. The starting rhythm itself tells
you that whoever is singing is bubbling with joy. The rhythm
throughout this song conveys so much joy.
Anger and sadness combine in this song and the rhythm adds so
much emotion to the song.
You can understand the joy of Raja when he is asked to convey valor
through rhythm. ‘aala madanga’ from ‘Pazhassiraja’
Even for standard love songs, Raja comes up with some superb
rhythmic arrangements which adds to the emotion of the song.
‘poongkatru’ from ‘Vetri VIzha’. The rhythm of the song takes the
joy to a different level.
Let me close with this simple rhythm which comes slowly and
contributes its mite to this delicate sad song. ‘nal veenai nadham’
from ‘Bharathan’
The rhythm usage in Raja songs is a PhD thesis. In fact someone can
do a thesis only on Raja’s strategy of using rhythms to enhance
memory. For the effort Raja has put in the rhythm section, he
deserves such a thesis.
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Musical Philosophy of
Raja – Part 3: One idea
per song
Posted onAugust 29 by raaga_suresh
I wrote about this aspect in detail when I wrote about MSV’s works in
my other musical blog. It is worth repeating here because it makes a
lot of sense. Here is what I wrote in my MSV’s article:
“Illayaraja, who entered Tamil film music through ‘Annakili’
represents the biggest discontinuity in Indian Film Music thought.
This may be difficult for people to accept. R D Burman or Rahman
may come to your mind whenever people talk about a discontinuity.
So let me put forth my hypothesis on why I consider Raja as a
discontinuity and a break from our Indian film music tradition,
We have already seen how both Hindi film music and South Indian
film music both depended on Classical music of North and South
respectively in their formative years. One of the important features
of Indian Classical music is the centrality of the singer /
instrumentalist. There have been some great accompaniment artist
but even they are subservient to the main artist. This spills over into
film music as well and for long the tune and the singer were of
importance. The music director was basically a person who could set
some wonderful tunes. They did not expect the music director to be
well versed in orchestration. Orchestration was left to assistants.
(Anil Biswas talks about one such talented assistant of his. It is also
well known the Pugazhendi did most of the orchestration for K V
Mahadevan). This meant that the major musical ideas resided in the
tune and hence the singer of paramount importance. That is why we
had singers who dominated their industry pushing even the music
directors to shade. Lata dominated Hindi film industry, Gantasala
dominated Telugu film industry and Jesudas was the king of
Malayalam film song. Even when R D Burman arrived and the
orchestration got a new fillip, the tune and rhythm were still the
king. Kishore’s and Asha’s voices were central to R D Burman’s
songs. I want to look at this phenomenon from a different angle and
say that all the music directors gave their best musical ideas to the
song (which ofcourse includes the rhythm of the song). The ideas
embedded in the orchestration were limited. Secondly we can say
that in true Indian music tradition, the orchestration was present to
‘support’ the tune and hence it was enmeshed with the tune.
Raja’s thought was different. His idea of a song was more akin the
idea of symphony of western classical music. No, I am not
suggesting that Raja’s songs are symphonies or some such. Just that
Raja’s conception of a film song closely mirrored the ideas of
western classical music. If you listen to a symphony you will notice
that while there is a central melody, the symphony is not just the
melody. There are multiple harmonic strains either running in
parallel with the melody or supplementing the melody. None of the
threads can be discarded without affecting the overall effect. In
essence, in the symphony there was no central instrument.
Everyone had a part to play: some more and some less, but it was
just a part. No one was the pillar. Second, the symphony was viewed
as an organic whole. In the sense that musical ideas were spread
throughout the symphony unlike Indian music where the ideas were
more in the tune. Raja thought of his song as an organic whole while
many of us thought of it as tune and orchestration. In Raja’s songs
the ideas were spread throughout of the song and the quality of
ideas for the orchestration was in no way inferior to the quality of
ideas embedded in the tune”
You can hear the characteristics of what I spoke. Just think for a
minute. Does the song lose much if it loses the orchestration?
Once again check the prominence of the tune and also think how
much the song loses when it loses its orchestration. I have heard
this when it was first released. It used to be played often on radio.
Till date the tune is etched in my heart but I don’t remember the
orchestration at all. It is the same with the Chitchor song as well
I chose these songs since they appeared in the year Raja made his
appearance. Ofcourse the interludes have become slightly more
elaborate than the earlier years but still they were not taken very
seriously either by the music director or the listener. As I said that
was because the tune was of prime importance.
Raja was well trained in WCM and his approach is closer to WCM
wherein the complete song is a single idea. It is as if a single idea is
built using multiple ideas, none of which seem to stand out in
isolation. They all serve the cause of building that musical idea. So
in Raja’s case talking about prelude, interlude and postlude would
only display our ignorance. Raja thought more holistically. These
were not separate parts. The song was a continuous whole.
First check the prelude. Observe how it is built by multiple ideas and
how some phrases are expanded. I would say there are atleast 4
distinct musical ideas in the prelude itself. And the prelude naturally
flows into the pallavi. In the pallavi itself, there is a shift when Janaki
sings, ‘samanthi pookal’. Yet it remains within the overall idea. The
way the interlude picks up makes you feel they are just expanding
on the pallavi and once again the way it flows into the charanam
gives you the feeling of being entrapped in a single domain. The
second interlude has very different ideas but it never goes away
from the central idea. And once you have heard that flute in the
interlude you definitely feel that if you remove the orchestration, a
lot would be lost.
Once you have heard the strumming and humming of the prelude, is
their any way you can hear the song in your own mind without that
humming or the strumming? The strumming and the humming of
the prelude setup the mood for the whole song and every
instrument or voice that plays has only one job, to maintain the
mood. Be it the flute, be it the bass guitar, the keyboard, SPB or
Janaki or the tune. Everything is an extension of that prelude. This
song probably gives you a very clear idea of what I meant that Raja
composes the song holistically and not as tune, interlude and
prelude. If you didn’t think of all these simultaneously and try to
stitch disparate ideas together, you will not get such an organic
sound or mood.
The first one was a love song, the second one a tragic love breakup
song. For Raja it doesn’t matter which song it is. He uses the same
philosophy in all his songs. Every note in my song has value. It is not
to just extend time. It is to extend ideas. Here he is with this
amazing tune and orchestration for ‘poovar senni mannan’, the
Tiruvasagam verse. The mood is in great contrast to the other. Here
Manikavasagar urges people to move towards the feet of the Lord. It
is time to shed off the mortal coils and ascend the path towards
Paramasiva.
The first sound of the drum creates a feeling of dread. This is the
final journey of human life. Once that is established, everything else
falls into place. Every drum beat, every flute piece, every trumpet,
every violin plays the same idea in different tune.
You can pick up your favorite Raja songs and analyze them and you
will realize that whatever I said here holds from them as well.
This is one of the reason why in Raja’s reign, while we had some
legendary singers, they were never able to dominate the industry.
That was because Raja dominated the industry and in his songs,
voice was just one more instrument.
I say this explicitly because till the time Raja came on to screen it
was either the singer dictating the industry or an actor dictating the
industry. Here I mean music industry. In Bollywood it was Lata who
dominated for a long time. She fought with lot of music directors:
Anil Biswas, S D Burman, O P Nayyar, C Ramachandra to name a
few. She also had her tiff with people like Raj Kapoor. Yet, none of
this affected her popularity. Later R D Burman became a name to
reckon with but Kishore too was an important factor during those
says as he was seen as the voice of the superstar Rajesh Khanna. In
South, the Telugu film music industry was dominated by Gantasala.
It was never a Rajeshwar Rao song or a Pendyala song. It was
always a Gantasala song. It was the same with K J Yesudas in
Malayalam. It was Yesudas song first and foremost. Then only it was
a Baburaj song or Devarajan master song and so on. In Tamil film
industry, even though MSV was the undisputed king amongst music
directors, songs were generally seen as Sivaji songs or MGR songs.
After Raja came in, it became Illayaraja songs. It didn’t matter who
sang them or in which language, the song was an Illayaraja song.
This was due to two reasons; One, Raja put his stamp on every song
he composed. Second, his song was not just the tune (by extension,
not just the voice).
Musical Philosophy of
Raja-Part 2 : Believe in
the listener
Posted onAugust 19 by raaga_suresh
One of the most discussed subject for any artist is whether he/she
should create for the sake of creation or should they create
understanding what their audience needs. I don’t think a conclusion
has been reached on this yet and will probably never be reached.
There are some who create because they believe in their creation
and then there are those who create keeping their audience in mind.
Raja, in my opinion, was slightly different. He created what he
wanted but he was very sure his audience would like it.
Here is a song from his early years, ‘en vanile’ from ‘Johny’.
Let us assume that Raja had created mainly the tune and had not
concentrated much on the interludes. Maybe he just gave a simple
interlude. I would postulate even then the song would have been a
hit. The interludes take it to a different level and they stay put in our
consciousness. Every note that Raja uses, the bass, the
counterpoint melodies in the interludes, the rhythm. Each of them
enables the song to anchor deeply in our ears and then we cannot
hear the song without the interludes, even when we are singing to
ourselves. Our ears slowly starts to hear all the layers, the piano,
the violin, the flute, the bass guitar.
Let us now see how Raja’s music, with all the effort he puts, impacts
the people. I am going to give an example before closing this post.
You can hear how Raja uses WCM to enhance the tune. The words of
Manikavasagar have their own beauty but when Raja supports them
with his music, it opens a new dimension and takes us into the heart
of Manikavasagar himself. Every note harmoniously supporting the
main idea such that it will never leave us for a long long time.
Musical Philosophy of
Raja – Part 1 : It
is emotional
Posted onAugust 17 by raaga_suresh
Having got the disclaimers out of the way, let me go and give you
my first assertion. This is my understanding of Raja’s philosophy.
The assertion is, “The primary aim of music must be to evoke
emotions”. In this regard, I would like to bifurcate music into one
that is purely interested in the possibilities of sound and one which
is interested in conveying the emotional content inherent in music.
Let me explain this in detail. Let us take the concept of raga. Raga
as such is nothing but experimenting with the possibilities of sound
in a structured fashion. According to me, the main concern of all
classical music: Western, Carnatic and Hindustani, is the same.
Explore the possibilities of sound. Western classical music tries to
explore the possibilities of sound in terms of harmonies and Indian
classical music explores it in terms of melodies and micro tones. The
aim though remains the same. To extrapolate, when a musician is
singing Kalyani, he/she is exploring the sound with certain
restriction and giving ‘shape’ to it. He/She is not aiming for a certain
emotion. A raga alapana need not worry about conveying a
particular emotion. It is about conveying a ‘color’ of the raga.
You can argue that an artist can make alapanais emotional. You can
further argue that some ragas have certain emotions inherent in
them, like Subhapanthuvarali being sad and Aarabhi being happy
and so on. While it is true for a small set of ragas, the general
concept is to establish a ‘color’ for the raga which is not ’emotional’
in the standard sense of the word. For example, in case of grand
raga like Todi or Kambhoji, you cannot really establish a particular
emotion in its development. Yes, you can develop Todi in such a way
that you bring out a certain emotion out of it, but if you want to
show the fully scope of Todi, you cannot afford to focus any one
particular emotion.
Not just the concept of ragas and scales, there are music composers
who have compositions which are experimental in nature and they
explore the possibilities of harmonies, fusion and so on. These
pieces may not evoke any strong emotions but give you an idea on
what directions music can take. (The music itself may not evoke
emotions but these experiments do evoke strong emotions in form
of protests)
According to me, Raja sees music through the emotional prism. For
him, music has to serve the emotional need. He has never
advocated experiment for the sake of experiment. All his
experiments have an emotional bias. Raja has only three
‘independent albums’, of which only two are really independent:
‘How to Name It’ and ‘Nothing but Wind’. You can argue that even
these evoke lot of emotions in you and you don’t hear them as mere
academic exercise in fusion.
This is one reason why his ‘fusion’ doesn’t sound like fusion at all.
He is not looking at various genres of music as different from each
but rather he is looking at them as a part of larger toolkit of sound.
(I will try and expand this thought in a later post in this series with
examples. ) Ofcourse this requires an extraordinary understanding
of music forms. Not only that, it requires a genius brains to look at
commonalities beyond the apparent differences. Raja is one of the
very few minds in world music (maybe even the only one) who can
look deep into music as well look at it from far above.
Right from the prelude you can see how Raja generates joy. He uses
both Western Classical Music, the violins playing the counter melody
to the flute on one hand. On the other hand he uses
Simhendramadhyamam ragam to convey the joy. Not to mention
the shenai piece in between. Add to it the way rhythm is used,
especially in the charanam. The gait represents the beating of the
heart in joy. So a lot of techniques, genres go into giving us the
intended emotion. Even if the person has no clue on where the song
was used in the movie or does not understand Tamil, it will clear to
the person that this is a song of joy. The music alone tells us this
fact.
Now let us shift to the diametrically opposite emotion: a sense of
despondency and anger. This is from the movie, ‘Merku Thodarchi
Malai’, ‘andharathil thongudhamma’.
You will notice that in this song Raja doesn’t use the WCM much.
Rather he uses the more modern drum machine and loops as well as
the synthesizer. Ofcourse the tune captures the anger and
helplessness perfectly. The synthesizer and loops are generally
applied by most music directors to give ‘item numbers’ or ‘dance
numbers’. Here Raja uses it to deepen the darkness inherent in the
lyrics. Once again, play the way without the lyrics and you would
know what emotion the song is trying to convey
Here you hear Raja employing some rock and roll techniques initially
to get the fun mood going. Another interesting point (which I want to
write as a separate post later) is the usage of Mohanam for
conveying fun. Mohanam is generally used for melodious songs.
Raja uses it for a fun song. So here you see a combination of
carnatic ragam with rock and roll to create a sense of fun. Once
again, and sorry for repeating it, the song conveys the emotion
without the lyrics.
The single violin with the keyboard in the background creates the
mood, which is sustained by the tabla and the flute which peeks in
occasionally. This song shows how to create the required emotion
with only a few instruments and yet make it look like a large
orchestra was playing !!
Generally most songs you hear are pegged to a single emotion: joy,
sadness, anger and so on. What if you need to convey multiple
emotions in a song. Not like one stanza being happy and another
being sad but the full song itself being a melange of emotions. Raja
has done this in more than one occasion and nothing can convey
this than the song from ‘Nee Dhane En Pon Vasantham’, ‘mudhal
murai partha nyabagam’
Finally, I will give you a type of song which has been in Indian film
music for a long time now, the philosophical song. Raja once again
uses all his musical prowess to convey the intended emotion.
Will end the first part here. And a final disclaimer. I don’t have any
specified schedule to post these. I will do than whenever I get time
and whenever I am in a mood to write. So kindly bear with me.
I will discuss some of the recent female solos that were given by
Raja. All of them are very melodic. Many of them happen to be in
Telugu and Malayalam. In recent movies that Raja has been
involved in, the number of songs have been limited (maybe 2 songs
in a movie) or no songs at all (like Onayum Aatukuttiyum, Kutrame
Dhandanai). Even with the 2 song limitation or short song (to be
played in the background) limitation, he has come up with some
lovely melodies.
I spoke about short songs being used a BGM. Here is one such song
for ‘Amma Kanakku’. The tune and orch bring out the sensitivity of
the situation. This is not a situation for experiementation. Raja
keeps everything minimal and enhances the scenes.
If ‘punnami poovai’ was grand, then this Shreya Ghoshal song from
the yet to be released Malayalam film ‘Clint’ is very intimate. Melody
is the key for this song and Shreya’s voice aids in this aspect. There
is a joy which spreads when you hear this song
All the attributes that I mentioned above for the ‘Clint’ song are
present in this superb melody from ‘Sneha Veedu’, ‘avani thumbi’.
Once more it is Shreya. I love this song to bits right from the starting
prelude.
Rajavin Ramanamalai
Posted onJuly 22, 2017 by raaga_suresh
This album has a total of 10 songs, 8 of which are tuned by Raja and
2 of them tuned by a person called KVS and orchestrated by Raja.
Let’s have a look at the songs.
Overall, a top class devotional album. Very simple and sweet. Gives
a very peaceful feeling. Go buy it.
Despair of
the dispossessed
Posted onJune 13, 2017 by raaga_suresh
The most recent song from ‘Merku Thodarchi Malai’ had me thinking
about some songs of Raja wherein Raja tunes to voices of the
dispossessed. Some of these have a striking similarity in the way
Raja approaches them.
Right from the beginning, the rhythm is strong. Very rarely will you
hear such a rhythm played for a sad song but here it makes perfect
sense. The strong rhythm also serves another purpose. It balances
the song. In the sense that it ensures that the song doesn’t become
maudlin. The extreme self-pity in the words, the grief inherent in the
tune balanced by the drums, thus ensuring equilibrium. The strong
drumming also ensures we understand the turmoil of the man
singing the song.
Another song which shares similar characteristics with the Koil Kalai
song is ‘kannil parvai’ from ‘Naan Kadavul’. The tune here is more
melodic and is not as harsh as the previous one but this is also
suffused with self-pity. Raja once again balances the sadness part
with the vigorous drumming with seems initially at odds with the
nature of the song but slowly you realise that the orchestration
perfectly captures the turmoil of a blind beggar girl who has no
possessions.
In Indian film music, there have been many revolutionary songs and
sad songs of the dispossessed but I have never heard music
directors approach it the way Raja does. Raja’s combination of
energy and sadness to represent the state of internal turmoil is
unique in Indian film music.
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