"Oh My Lovely Lalana" - need composer info

[Sankar Narayanan]

Dear Forumites,

I have listened to Sikkil Gurucharan sing "Oh My Lovely Lalana" - a Javali in Kharahapriya. The composer name is given as Karur Shivaramaiah. While I am musically ambivalent on this composition, I am also anthropologically curious to know more about this composer & the context of this composition:

What is the background of this composer, and in what context did he compose this Javali?
Are the full lyrics available? (Thanks in advance Sri Ragade-Ji!)
Who else besides Sikkil Gurucharan has sung this piece?
What are some other CM compositions in dual languages (with English being one of them)?

Eager to see your responses!

[Lakshman]

O my lovely (jAvaLi). rAgA: kharaharapriyA. Adi tALA. Karur Shivaramiah.

P: O my lovely lalanA ElanE pommaNTi
A: EmOya nIyuNTi kAminI ninnu
C1: kaugalimpu vELa kAnta nI vATinati kapaTa mATalani kanukoNTini
2: iTUvaNTi step-is it fit to take sit a while here let me convince you
3: evaraivattanu don’t be angry shivarAmuni padamu bADu

The lyrics are from the book Javalis by N.C.Parthasarathy.

[kkbava]

Dear Forumites,

I have listened to Sikkil Gurucharan sing "Oh My Lovely Lalana" - a Javali in Kharahapriya. The composer name is given as Karur Shivaramaiah. While I am musically ambivalent on this composition, I am also anthropologically curious to know more about this composer & the context of this composition:

What is the background of this composer, and in what context did he compose this Javali?
Are the full lyrics available? (Thanks in advance Sri Ragade-Ji!)
Who else besides Sikkil Gurucharan has sung this piece?
What are some other CM compositions in dual languages (with English being one of them)?

Eager to see your responses!

Hello,

1) Background of this composer - even I have been looking for more details - not much is available so far. (My mother's PhD work on jAvaLIs many years ago doesnt say much about this composer too)
2) Full lyrics - Sri Lakshma Ragade already shared with you - if you can / would like to read in Telugu, you can find the same also at https://javali.blog/2020/12/08/427-%e0% ... li-lalana/ and https://javali.blog/2021/04/08/669-%e0% ... mai-lavli/
3) Besides Sri Sikkil Gurucharan, I found more videos (of singers / dance performers on youtube) - need to add links to lyrics - been postponing for a while. https://youtu.be/mCO_fmoYJUc?si=_elDOKFJ79CjygIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KLDRUU ... YXZhbGk%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphI3sD ... YXZhbGk%3D

and many more....
4) This one https://javali.blog/2021/05/23/746-%e0% ... dear-come/ is a four-language jAvaLi, by the same composer. Telugu, English, Tamil, and Kannada. So far, in the 1250+ jAvaLi lyrics I came across, these are the two with English words (intentionally) written.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
kk
https://javali.blog

[kkbava]

Just noticed that there is one more multi-lingual jAvaLi (includes English words) by dvibhAshyam pullakavi
You can see the lyrics at https://javali.blog/2020/10/11/312-%e0% ... opamelara/

Similarly, https://javali.blog/2020/05/29/42-%e0%b ... -sayaku/is a Telugu jAvaLi with many Tamil lines.

https://javali.blog/2020/07/23/151-%e0% ... ghanaraya/ is another multi-lingual jAvaLi with some dialect of Hindi embedded in a Telugu jAvaLi.

Full list available at https://javali.blog/5-8-%e0%b0%ac%e0%b0 ... %e0%b1%81/

Regards,
kk
https://javali.blog

[shankarank]

Dear Forumites,

I have listened to Sikkil Gurucharan sing "Oh My Lovely Lalana" - a Javali in Kharahapriya. The composer name is given as Karur Shivaramaiah. While I am musically ambivalent on this composition, I am also anthropologically curious to know more about this composer & the context of this composition:

Since you added a bit of a commentary over and above the question, we can pickup from there

To start off some light hearted critique , by a thoughtful acknowledged expert Wiz of this forum: https://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopi ... 08#p346308

His thoughts on "Kapi family" is still on request and awaiting elucidation.

Lets see how this raagam "Harapriya" figured in tinsel world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EAC12zKnp8

After music director tyAgarAja, G. Ramanathan ( just for disclosure , in the years growing up I never heard this name being mentioned - these are forgotten names) has tried this scale and after that nobody else and SrI G.S. Mani then declares emphatically, nobody else can!

Well , today if somebody projects this even as a mild/soft SRngAra rasa theme, especially in a movie scene, retrospectively I would laugh at it! That is post exposure to what padams and javalis are!

Theatre over does music with hyberbolic upper zone reach.

SrI tyAgaraja used it for expressing Bhakti - which is not a rasa , a more emotionally restrained scenario.

As SrI NSG put it when tuning nallatOr vINai seydu in tOdi (Jaya TV), Carnatic concert stage requires emotional restraint, to dwell on movements and techniques and convey technical ideas. As TVG said in his memoir talk on Arkay, Rice was Re 1 per quintal, and when a person pays that much to listen to a concert we need to show some vElaipaaDus ( workmanship or technique). Karaharapriya is a useful scale for such exercises.

The fact that G.S Mani cites Naadasvara vidvans as great handlers of this scale, gives away the truth that technique triumphed over expression.

As G.S Mani sings viruttam like passage, just in the second line, the phrases start running, like for example kOri sevimparaarE. This scale cannot stay still for long and it needs stacking of 4 or 5 notes to sustain. And it's landings are mostly on convenient pancamam and other landings are not convincing, due to the mid tetra-chord dissonance. It has a symmetric and reiterative dissonance in both tetra-chords.

As old rasikas use to say, Karaharapriya and Harikambodhi have lot of janyams ( neraiya janyam!). adeppaDi? How come? enda maDai tirandatanaal janyangal aruviyai koTTIna? Which dam opened for descendent ragams to gush like a river fall?

Thing to ponder!

If your musical ambivalence is about the lyrical flow, the lack of cadence of the mixing language pedestrianizes the rest of the additions of the native Indian language! No yati maitri, something being force fitted.

We have to take these as some trial and error attempts for some fashionable faddish reasons.

Even a bhajan or Dolotsavam song will have better movement!

One thing we have to understand! Indian languages of ancient times have proper syllabic stress balance or words that can be taken for musical construction that have them. A language corrupted through several borrowings and morphings of some wandering people, how can we expect that to have such properties?

Well for most that is not anything to bother with. For them laya is only the beating on thighs that aiyyar household singers do after all!

[Sankar Narayanan]

Thank you Sri Lakshman Ragade Sir for the lyrics and Sri kkbava sir for the many details and links.

I will continue to look into why these composers had an urge/need/desire to use English (were they just being playful?) .
Will keep this forum informed. Kind Regards.