Reviews Worth Reading

Review the latest concerts you have listened to.
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bilahari
Posts: 2631
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 09:02

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by bilahari »

Thank you, Ravi, for providing the link to that beautiful article. I hope she gets invited to perform in Chennai - I was looking out for her name last year, but she didn't have any concerts.

venkatakailasam
Posts: 4170
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 19:16

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by venkatakailasam »

You can find a few songs of hers at :

http://www.sangeethamshare.org/svasu/UP ... enkatesan/

Shri Vasu's folder

venkatakailasam

rshankar
Posts: 13754
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:26

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by rshankar »

I am posting this because of the artist mentioned at the end - Smt. Vasavi, a sibling of the Malladi duo. Are there any tracks of hers one can listen to?

rshankar
Posts: 13754
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:26

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by rshankar »

A lovely review of this music director extraordinaire...

venkatakailasam
Posts: 4170
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 19:16

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by venkatakailasam »

Image

His classical odyssey......

Are we aware that Actor Kamal Haasan learnt music from Dr. BMK?

Read it at..

http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday ... epage=true

bala747
Posts: 314
Joined: 20 Mar 2006, 12:56

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by bala747 »

"Vidvan Tanjavooru Kalyana Raman (1930-1994) hailing from Komal village of Tanjore Dist of Tamil Nadu had practiced whistling as a necessity. His father Komal N. Srinivasa Iyer initiated him to Karnatak music. He became a great scholar of Karnatak music, and was very famous in those days. He had performed in Mysore too in seventies, under the auspicious of Nadabrahma Sangeetha Sabha, during the days when the concerts were held at the Sahakara Bhavana on 100 feet Road. Unfortunately, Kalyana Raman lost his voice due to an ailment and failure of vocal chords, which had no cure in those days."

I heard a spellbinding subhapathuvarali (I realize I am biased towards the varali family of ragas, from varali to kuntalavarali) of SK whistling. My words to my brother, as I sent him that recording were:

"Dear Lord! S Kalyanaraman.. Whistling! Whistling! How on earth does he even make a gimmick sound so fantastic? Goosebumps."

That S in front of his name is Subhapanthuvarali. To me he will always be Subhapanthuvarali Kalyanaraman.

I also realize all my heroes were crazy and they died way ahead of their time... I guess that's why I find the current music scene so underwhelming. Its too "standardized, homogenized and sanitized for your protection".

There are no mad geniuses anymore. I would rather have ONE Kalyanaraman than a hundred million Sanjay Subramaniams. Nothing against him or his fans though. I am sure the fault is all mine.

Rsachi
Posts: 5039
Joined: 31 Aug 2009, 13:54

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Rsachi »

Bala747,
the originality and innovation of masters like SK are like the classic 747 airplane :) Nothing today can match its majesty.

There is a YouTube concert of SK with LGJ and UKS. Totally brilliant with Mohana, Hamsanada, Kedaragowla...
https://youtu.be/qDNB9q_Jtpo

Ramasubramanian M.K
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Joined: 05 May 2009, 08:33

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Ramasubramanian M.K »

Folks: FYI. A couple of us headed by Dr.P.Rajagopalan--Founder-member of CMAN-- arranged a concert tour of SK in the US in the early seventies(prior to formation of CMANA).SK gave us 2 chamber concerts in Dr.Rajagopalan's house --one of them a full concert of GNB krithis--a 3 hour tour-de-force and the other a 2 hour Whistling Concert--I am sure the tapes are available somewhere(I am very poor at "archiving"). I will try to "unearth" them.

SK was an awesome talent and a very easy-going artiste to host--he was adventurous in the sense that in between concerts he would venture all by himself with Srimushnam Raja Rao (who was in his early twenties at that time) from Garden City in Long Island NY to Manhattan for sight seeing--no tour guide. Anybody who has lived in NY during the early seventies would recall how dangerous the streets were(mugging was common) and despite our overtures(none of us could take time off to take them around!!!) not to risk being "rash" SK would ignore and venture out--He was as bold in his personal demeanour as he was with his music!!!

bala747
Posts: 314
Joined: 20 Mar 2006, 12:56

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by bala747 »

I used to wonder why people were singing praises of artistes of yesteryear. In fact in the old Sangeetham.com website the arguments used to come to blows (virtually)! I recall a particularly nasty one involving MMI. I think I might have called some of you there a opprobrious name or two (apologies for that by the way).

I realised after listening to enough concerts that what they had back then was real originality. In the sense that you could distinctly identify what made a Semmangudi Sankarabharanam, a GNB Sanmukhapriya, or an MDR Panthuvarali and no matter how 'simple' it sounded, creativity was always 'uber alles'. Nowadays there are many great musicians in the scene who give very elaborate renditions of ragas like Thodi and Bhairavi but it all appears rehearsed, standardised and default. Furthermore, they performed within the limits of the raga, and their forays into different aspects of the raga ALWAYS had the bhava of the raga in mind. The essence of a raga is more than just a series of ascending and descending notes (which is why I never liked TN Seshagopalan who has the dubious honour of singing unintended sruthimalikas in his concerts, in his quest for 'fastest brigha singing in the world'.) They also never took the audiences for granted. Nowadays you have artistes dumbing down their performances thinking 'ivaalukku ivlavu porum' (Especially when they are overseas), and from concert halls being crowded for OS Thyagarajan in 1996, nowadays you can't get ten people to listen to an Abhishek Raghuram in Singapore (I am just using names at random, Sri OST has given some fantastic concerts here), despite the population of expat Indians growing by leaps and bounds here. Even the reviews I read are pretty much the same. Ridiculous cricket analogies, overusage of jargon all covering up the fact that there is nothing different about the different concerts anymore. Either the concerts have become stale, or the reviewers have become lazy, or afraid to say anything that might be perceived as negative about the artistes.

And again there are too few mad geniuses. Balachander for instance would drive you insane playing the same line twenty times, and follow it up with a line so fantastic you wonder if for a brief moment you were transported to a musical heaven before being brought back to earth. Don't believe it? Listen to his 'teeratha vilayaatu pillai' or MDR's Saroruhasana Jaye.

Nick H
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Nick H »

nowadays you can't get ten people to listen to an Abhishek Raghuram in Singapore
There are ten of us here that you can't get to listen to Abhishek. Me and nine others. Otherwise, I gather that he is a hall filler.

:twisted: :lol:
I also realize all my heroes were crazy and they died way ahead of their time... I guess that's why I find the current music scene so underwhelming. Its too "standardized, homogenized and sanitized for your protection".
Do you think that the MBA and CA etc education might have had a deleterious effect on music?

VK RAMAN
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:29

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by VK RAMAN »

MBA's logical and analytical mind and CA's accounting mind - fact based - are inimical to creativity I guess

vasanthakokilam
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Bala, are you sure about Abhishek in Singapore? As Nick says, these days he gets a fairly huge following in both India and the U.S. And he is also not the one to do the usual things. So he is creating his own brand, if I may. If he does not get a decent audience in Singapore that will be surprising indeed.

Just like you said in apologetic terms that your impressions have changed about the past masters, I would say leave some room for the current day musicians to do the same to change your mind in the next 20 to 25 years. I am saying this on the assumption that you are not set in your ways and not coming to these conclusions as a cliche as a lot of old timers tend to do, and also not swayed by someone else's criteria to evaluate things but to look at it with a fresh perspective and independent and individualistic judgement. Because if none of those assumptions are true, then it does not make sense to even talk about it except for shooting the breeze in 'anglaippu' fashion.

Contrary to what you may be feeling, the CM world is changing and in my own assessment, the changes will be palpably felt in the next decade. Tastes are different of course so I would predict how you will react to those changes, but one thing I do not think we can say is that they are all the same. The reasons are multifold but the chief one is that the availability of music is so plenty and free that musicians need to make a case to the audience as to why they need to come to the concert hall and to listen to live music. A lot of the past masters' audience did not have all that luxury, the only way to listen to them is in a live setting. I think that itself changes things in a dramatic way. As I said, the end result is not guaranteed to be to any one person's specific liking. And even if someone does things differently,there are thousand others who want it to be the same and provide the opposing voice. TMK is a classic case of that but he seem to be pushing through not minding all the nay-sayers and the audience seems to be reacting to it. In his case, the interesting thing is, his changes are not necessarily populist. So he is not catering to the ultra conservatives or the populists and I am surprised he actually managed to define his niche. We will see if it lasts.

Having said all that, I do not know who in the current crop of leading musicians can raise to that stature of an MDR or Balachandar. Of course, our imagination is a limiting factor here. We should not be looking for any one resembling their style of course. I guess what we are looking for is someone who is unique and that uniqueness will be obvious, whether one likes the music or not.

The 'mad genious' criteria is a measure of Himalayan proportions and we will be lucky to see one in each generation and that too only if the prevailing taste-makers do not crush them in to oblivion.

bala747
Posts: 314
Joined: 20 Mar 2006, 12:56

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by bala747 »

Oh no I didn't mean anything negative about Sri Raghuram. I was just saying how even in here, audiences have fallen for all but the MOST popular artistes. I don't mean Sri Raghuram personally, I just used his name as a placeholder. I thought I had made it clear. I have never heard him to be honest. Now that you are saying he is worth a listen I will most certainly do so. (Ah old times where I had to spend more words explaining one throwaway sentence than everything else I wrote!)

I think institutionalising a 'degree programme' in music was the most detrimental to the spirit of the music, rather than the MBA/CA education. Artistes back then were well educated too (GNB was a Literature graduate, and MDR was a physics major I think). That didn't stop them from being great musicians. Loss of royal patronage and later, support due to strong anti-brahmin sentiments in Tamil Nadu didn't help the cause much either. We brahmins have to bear our share the blame as well, becoming more exclusivist and elitist when it came to music. It is now a case where you have an art form that is in search of relevance. But I think the worst thing that could happen to music was the Music Academy and the institutionalising of musical training by a bunch of administrators.

You summed up the problem perfectly:
" As I said, the end result is not guaranteed to be to any one person's specific liking. And even if someone does things differently,there are thousand others who want it to be the same and provide the opposing voice."

And that is what is going to kill the music system. When you have so much resistance to any innovation, you will become stale. Ariyakudi was pilloried by people into the 90's (the 1990's!) simply for inventing the concert format! I had oldies in my granddad's place bemoaning that a talentless womaniser changed the concert system to be more populist because he wasn't able to sing three hour thodis!

I don't expect to be hearing a Balachander or a Kalyanaraman again, but I also don't want to. One is enough. However, we DO need an Ariyakudi. We need someone who can fundamentally change the way the music is presented so that it continues to appeal from a musical, emotional and spiritual point. Fusion stuff is not the answer. All you end up doing is demeaning the quality of both streams of music, and will only appeal to the cultural window shopper. Innovations 'for the sake of it' like what Balamurali or L Shankar does isn't either. A contortionist is not a dancer. The essence of our music has always been about exploring the moods created by a set of notes. The bhava is supreme. It is also a fundamental concept of virtually all music. So why are we getting worse and worse at expressing it through our system, despite our artistes becoming more and more adept at it? When you 'structure' the learning of music such that only those who follow a prison-system like instruction regimen are passed through it, you pretty much create a stale music scene.

bala747
Posts: 314
Joined: 20 Mar 2006, 12:56

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by bala747 »

I went and dug out Abhishek Raghuram on Youtube and found a concert.

Started with Ananda Natana Prakasam.

One of the krithis I pretty much use as a barometer. Great musicians will sing krithis like Ananda Natana perfectly. Even D K Jayaraman manages to not mangle this too much. (But he usually doesn't. That's pretty much all he has). Abhishek had my attention up until the heart of the anupallavi, and he decided to profoundly hurt my feelings by profoundly mispronouncing the words. The line, 'bhukti mukti prada daharaakaasham' (He, the provider of pleasure and salvation, resides in the 'daharaakaasha' ) had morphed into 'bhukti mukti daraakaaram'. I have no idea what a daraakaaram is. The line is such a beautiful and profound one, and you can write an entire philosophical treatise on what the 'daharaakasha' is, and to see it mangled like this shows no respect for the profundity of the piece. This is not just a typical krithi. This is one of the masterpieces of Dikshithar, and written about Shiva in Chidambaram, the temple that represents that VERY WORD AAKASHA that he mangles! Unforgiveable. How can you claim to be a musician and not know and bring out the depth of the krithi you are supposed to be singing?! Would it be okay to willy nilly change the first four notes of Beethoven's 5th?! Would someone accept "Meru samaana" being sung as "Peru Samaana"? Or the Mona Lisa with a groucho Marx moustache? I don't say that they should know the meaning of every line of every composition ever composed, or that every syllable of yours needs to be criticised but to not know the meaning of even a few prominent works of the Trinity that you are presenting to an audience? Or even the one line you SHOULD perhaps pay some attention to? Listen to how MDR handles it. Okay if you think MDR is too high a standard to aim, listen to RK Srikantan.

The rest of the concert was fine. Fantastic imagination, and brilliant alapanas. I hope he doesn't break my heart again. Please sir, learn the meaning of some of the most beautiful lines penned by man before you step on the stage. Yeah there is a sruthi bhedam in the concert somewhere from Kamas to Vasantha or what not, but at the end of the day, a krithi like Ananda Natana Prakasam needs to presented in all its majesty. Don't bloody its nose.

Don't mess with a masterpiece.

cacm
Posts: 2212
Joined: 08 Apr 2010, 00:07

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by cacm »

I am GLAD you are pointing out how CARNATIC MUSIC "EXPERTS" MURDER THE COMPOSITIONS & GET WAY WITH IT BECAUSE OF IGNORANCE ON THE PART OF LISTENERS.. VKV

Nick H
Posts: 9379
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Nick H »

bala, you say that TNS was not one of your favourites. I have wondered if he sang like Abhishek in his youth and has mellowed. I'm not sure that I'll live long enough (another 20 years?) for Abhishek to mellow sufficiently for me.

VKV, I made some comments to a friend, about how an artist had hummed and mumbled their way through a particular song. My wife said that she wondered what more I might have to say if I actually understood the language! For the record, it was a statement of fact, and it was part of a great concert that I really enjoyed. Thus no identity is given, not even a clue to gender.

cacm
Posts: 2212
Joined: 08 Apr 2010, 00:07

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by cacm »

Dear Nick,
We enjoy MANY things & this is especially true if they dont sing using words as it can complicate things. As a matter of fact I enrolled in a JAZZ COURSE when I found out that DIXIELAND JAZZ made me happy till I learnt it was Funeral stuff! VKV

Nick H
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Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Nick H »

Wonderful. A friend once pointed out to me that funeral anagrams to real fun!

vasanthakokilam
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Bala, thanks for the clarification. I was not even thinking you were saying anything negative about AR ( and even if you did, there is no reason for me to rebut that ) but more the surprise that he was not getting any audience. Now I see you used his name as a random place holder. BTW, Ananda Natana Prakasam is something he has sung a few times. We can check that one word in other recordings, we do not want to nail him just because of one misstep.

Nick H
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Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Nick H »

I would nail the person responsible for printing non-chalance in a newspaper report. The single offence is one too many for a professional writer editor!

When I see this done with English, I am able to get a sense of how people feel when languages they know are mangled by the musical-equivalent mishap.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Nick, A lot of people here would become serial murderers :)

btw, is the '-' the problem? I have seen the word without the colon, I think.

I can sort of see why that can be annoying but these reactions are many times more than my own when I hear people making mistakes in Tamil. But that is what makes the world interesting, people having different pet peeves.

Nick H
Posts: 9379
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by Nick H »

Indeed it is a problem, because there is no such thing as chalant or chalance. Nonchalance is not the state of not being "chalant."

Sometimes these things, in print, arise from line-ending mistakes, where someone has manually hyphenated an end-of-line word which, in the final layout, doesn't come at the end of the line. However, in this instance, I choose to blame lack of understanding. I am very underwhelmed by New Indian Express English! ;)

PS. This is interesting. There might be an argument for introducing chalant into the language, but not for hyphenating nonchalanace.

RasikasModerator2
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Re: Reviews Worth Reading

Post by RasikasModerator2 »

This thread is being moved to the reviews section.

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