vasanthakokilam wrote: 
As a group (which includes me), we all find the artist looking at the book for very popular songs as bad. I think the same us would not think much badly if they do that for viruththam. While I admit to the above two extremes, it would not look odd to me if the krithi is something totally new to me. Again not always looking at the book but looking at it once in a while would not be too odd there. The problem with looking at the books too much is, it feels like they are isolating themselves and not be with the rest of the artists on stage and with the audience. It is more a visual distraction rather than musical, of course.
Is it just us who are too much inside the beltway? I will have to do an experiment by asking people who are at different radiuses. We see film music singers, even great ones (like Lata, Suseela, Janaki level) look at notes for songs they probably have sung thousands of times and that crowd does not seem to make a big issue out of it.
I agree with the thinking that - it is that isolation that is annoying, esplly when it's not a new-to-the-world number. As for why we accept it with movie playback singers, I can think of 2 drivers:
1. Film songs - by virtue of just being film songs help establish an instant rapport with audience/listeners. So, the artistes connecting with the listeners (eye-to-eye) becomes an add on, on-top of just singing. However, you might have noticed - the younger lot like Chinmayee, Karthik, Haricharan etc, ... do a lot more than singing to retain that rapport with the audience - & yes, we can criticize it as much as we want to (singing should just be singing, why make it a performance etc.. ) but it does create an impact
2. It's been done since forever - I think this is the stronger reason. From the times of TMS (perhaps even earlier) - we have seen these light music concerts always with that pad of lyrics in front of the singers. It's never been considered a gaffe or in any way dishonouring the listeners. Contrast this with Carnatic music concerts - I dont think we would remember any instance where an MS, MLV, DKP & other stalwarts referring to notes in a kutcheri. ... It just feels so out of place....
(personally, I dont want it to become commonplace in our kutcheris - unless of course for really new pieces!
