Folksy Shankarabharanam

[vasanthakokilam]

I have been wanting to see if there is a place for sowkyam filled folkish music with classical touches with a relaxed rhythm. The time and place has to be right for that.

And it was a month back and I extemporaneously played with that aesthetic in mind and recorded it. Shankarabharanam ( or Kurinji ) was a natural choice. The layam was so relaxed at times it was at the level of alapana layam, other times there is some rhythm but periodicity ( avarthana count ) was not adhered to. But it provided a lot of freedom. It felt natural. I am calling it emotional layam. Some may call this 'no rhythm' or 'alapana with some rhythm'. That is all true some extent. It was an off the cuff thing, so some bhashanga or misra aspects may have crept in!!

I thought I will share it here.

http://soundcloud.com/carnatic-music-up ... rabharanam

[cmlover]

pavanaja stuti pAtra pAvana caritra...
HemA kalya...Nam vaibhOgamE....
What were you smoking at the end

[vasanthakokilam]

CML: That is the danger of getting into the deep end of the pool on an extemporaneous manner. On the flute, the deep end of pool is the madhra sthayi below pa!!

OK, I see why you got the vibe of that song, the refrain slowly evolved to that towards the middle. Since this was not rehearsed, my recollection after many weeks may not be perfect....but when I began playing, the imagery I setup for myself is a rural paddy fields or a Kerala seashore. The lyric that flowed in my mind was something like 'kaDalorathil muththeduththu..something else here...mAlayAi thoduththu...un kazhuthil pOttu rasikkinrEn'. I do not even know where that lyric came from. On the melody, when I listened to the recording later, it had the vibe of kerala padams. There are some swati thirunal songs with a similar aesthetic.

[arasi]

See what you mean--the two of you!
hEmA kalyANam, followed by a romantic Kerala setting...natural progression there!
I heard kuRinji all along--a touch of chenjuruTTi somewhere, and ethuTa nilachitE. SankarAbharaNam mostly, as you played on.
It was more like mist rising out of water than smoke to me

[Vijayakumar]

it felt kuruniji to me all along