can someone help identify the violinist in this piece?

[ramarama]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHiEQ_0c7JY

Thanks much! And perhaps for completeness, the mridangam and kanjira players too - though that might be a lot tougher I imagine for any but the most hardened mridanga rasika?

[sreebeecane]

My guess(es):

Violin - Shri Varadarajan or Shri Nagai Muralidharan

Mridangam - Shri Mannargudi Easwaran

[bilahari]

It does not sound like Varadarajan to me, and the fingering doesn't suggest Nagai Muralidharan either. It is not a Parur violinist. That only leaves, well, several possibilities. Sorry to not be of much help - maybe try emailing the uploader?

[arasi]

Nagai Sriram?

[mahavishnu]

No it is Varadarajan, TK Murthy, V Nagarajan.
The youtube video's audio track is directly lifted and probably without permission from the commercial Charsur release Dec season 2000 (Karthik Fine arts, 5 Dec 2000).

[Rsachi]

What a story! Truth comes full circle.
1. Concert in 2000 recorded by Charsur.
2. CD released.
3. Some rasika zips, zaps and uploads on You Tube.
4. Google finds it.
5. Link is shared by another rasika on Rasikas.org asking for identifying accompanists.
6. Someone in Canada discovers the track piracy and advises accompaniment details.

By the way, using tags-matching and a Shazam type of detection, You Tube is currently advising everyone within minutes/hours if copyrights are violated, but their database does not mostly cover Indian music.

it is high time Charsur and such labels use CDDB tagging and correct listing of artiste names and track details. This helps us in our own archives and more importantly helps fight piracy.

[mahavishnu]

I agree.

This particular user on youtube is very prolific and there are many gems in his uploads: tv programs, many good quality recordings including a brilliant KVN concert that I linked to in the vidwans thread, rare videos of Guruvayoor Dorai on vocals, entire concerts from Thiruppunithura and other Kerala locations. I subscribe to his feed and look forward to his uploads, although this cataloguing leaves a lot to be desired for.

However, he is particularly insensitive to copyright issues. Several people have pointed this out to him and his classic defense has been that he has no commercial motives. Now he even disables comments on most of his posts to discourage any dialogue on this.

Charsur is quite aware of many of these things. Not sure what they are doing about it.

[mahavishnu]

it is high time Charsur and such labels use CDDB tagging and correct listing of artiste names and track details. This helps us in our own archives and more importantly helps fight piracy.

Piracy aside, have you tried ripping a charsur disc into itunes or another media player? There is no track info whatsoever (for the most part). This is unpardonable in this age of digital music.

[sreebeecane]

Mahavishnu, and much worse: I only buy digitally from Charsur. Even their digital stuff isn't tagged. Horror!

[Rsachi]

Guys, I ave been talking about CDDB and track tagging for >14 years, since Indian music came into the CD/digital age.

Indian musicians and producers are TOTALLY ignorant of this it looks like. Including Saregama and Rhythm House.
Some exceptions are Times Music and Music Today. Charsur and Kalakendra also have track quality and CD quality issues.
Almost all have CD sleeve packaging quality issues. All these are deterrents to buying authorised music!

Just like I had nightmares upgrading my HP TOUCHSMART 2700$ Vista computer to Windows7. Now HP clearly disowns Touchsmart upgrades to W8.

On the other hand, I discovered my 5 year-old copy of Monier Williams dictionary had a few pages missing. Motilal Banarsi Dass gave an on the spot replacement, with better printing and binding and an apology.

BTW I did get recently some replacements from Kalakendra and Charsur for defective tracks on CDs and downloads!

[mahavishnu]

Well, Motilal Banarsidas has a business ethic and pride in quality that is clearly missing in the Indian digital music industry.

[ramarama]

Thanks Mahavishnu! Thanks to that identification, I've just become a fan of S Varadarajan

[mahavishnu]

Yes, Varadu is awesome!