LALGUDI’S SOLO CONCERTS BLOCKED IN SANGEETHAPRIYA

[CRama]

As a member in the yahoo group, I got the mail that GJRKrishnan has asked Sangeethapriya to block the concerts of Lalgudi Jayaraman-solo and duets. The reason told by him is that recording companies are hesitating to release commercial albums of Lalgudi citing the reason that the concerts are already available in Sangeethapriya.

This will open a pandora’s box. If many of our musicians follow this route, Sangeethapriya cannot function in the present format. But, already many concerts have been downloaded by thousands of rasikas. Then what can be achieved by blocking the recordings. The Administrator has told that the matter is being discussed with GJRK and will come to some agreement. But who can take action if some recording companies digitise the concerts uploaded in Sangeethapriya and release them commercially. How to check that?

The workable solution could be (1) no further concert of Lalgudi will be uploaded. (2) there may be many concerts of Lalgudi outside the Sangeethapriya fold. GJRK can release those concerts commercially.

[mahavishnu]

CRama, thanks for bringing this issue to the attention of rasikas.

I followed the thread of conversations on the yahoo groups site. With the exception of Sachi and Sridharan (and other SP site admin folks), most of the public response to this has been ill-informed or just knee-jerk reactions.

The story is very simple. GJR would like to release his father's legacy concerts through a commercial source (probably Mr. Sudhakar's company, Swati is the label and/or others). The company/ies (and other commercially interests) believe that their business venture will be negatively affected if these concerts are available in SP, irrespective of recording quality. This is a very reasonable assumption.

So, in a perfectly gracious and reasonable settlement GJR and SP have agreed that the maestro's recordings will be removed from the site. GJR will work out a solution later where some of the recordings that are not going to be released commercially will be uploaded by prior arrangement.

I, for one, am glad that many of these concerts are now to be professionally handled, digitized and released in a publicly acceptable fashion. This is good for the future of LGJ's music and its responsible stewardship. This historic preservation effort should be done for all the past masters (including MSG, Ramnad krishnan, KVN, Kalyanaraman and others whose performances fall within the 50 year period where their estate holds the performer's rights).

Personally, I am willing to pay for whatever the market deems fair to get these recordings, when released commercially. Full points to Sangeethamshare and Sridharan for handling the situation very gracefully. I wish some of our younger musicians and other recording labels develop the same maturity.

This issue is completely different from the issue that Sachi (and others) rightfully raised on change.org when making the case for Parivadini against people who claim to hold the rights to the compositions of the trinity.

[VijayR]

Mahavishnu, superbly articulated! 100% with you on this one.

[Ramasubramanian M.K]

Mahavishnu: Echo Vijay R's sentiments.Given that most of the Maestro;s concerts(accompaniment/solo) have been in the pre-digital era and many in the hands of private persons(some of whom have been hoarding-not profiting I admit--)--the artistes(not only LGJ) are entitiled to fair compensation for their works--especially because remunerations during their times were meagre compared to the sums being talked about these days!!
I am not surprised that GJRK exhibits the same sense of probity and integrity that his Late Lamented Father stood for all his life!!!

[CRama]

My two cents. GJRK should release concerts other than Sangeethapriya uploads commercially. Because those which have been uploaded, lot of people will be having it. and very few may go for purchase of commercial albums in spite of having the Sangeethapriya downloads. And the major chunk of LGJ concerts in Sangeethapriya are good recordings.

I agree that the same model should be applied for other artistes as well. But recording companies have to come forward for release of albums of legends like Kalyanaraman. There is general lament that sale of commercial CDS are drooping as people are interested only in downloads. This was visible during this season. There were no fresh releases and a major portion of Sankara Hall sold books.

[SrinathK]

I say that online downloads are the future of music distribution. Whole albums with individual tracks ought to be available for paid download (like on Amazon) with a reasonable price model where the price is proportional to track length. But then the argument would be that a download could easily get distributed off the market. But still, it's worth a try. CDs and DVDs suffer from the same physical space requirements in my cabinet.

Why can't we try something like this : http://www.amazon.com/Jascha-Heifetz-Or ... ds=heifetz

Waiting for the day when "The Lalgudi Collection" comes to light.

There is an astounding number of recordings (commercial and otherwise) available of the maestro -- however they come with very variable audio quality, and the beauty of his music is often submerged under poorer recordings (I still have not found another recording with the quality of THAT Rama katha sudhaarasa recording back in the early 60s), so I hope they will look into that.