my two paisa here:
@Sachi_R mentioned requiring a "great aesthetic sense"
that is more than i can manage.
nonetheless i've sung a few viruttams, such as they were, and here they are.
@Sachi_R also mentioned "arresting words"
i do think i got that right, fwiw, in my own sweet way
(wh/is the name of a dave brubeck song, btwfyi)
So the first line here, the way it is parsed *at first*
usually gets a laugh and fulfills a 'call-to-attention' function
(singing is a speech act)
But, speaking also of "dovetailing",
actually the complete phrase is, well, quite sincere,
and more pathetic (in the 'paavam' sense) than funny,
but you only get that when the whole thing comes full circle.
As for "the weight of the truth which shines in the lines" (
@arasi)
Gosh.
A tall order, but I'm gonna claim a modicum of it here.
See what you think.
Here are seven versions over four years, w/ a variety of accompanists -
twice with flute, and they really make tilang ragam shine:
https://soundcloud.com/gautamtejasganes ... my-reverie
(btw, i can't help retaining the feeling that 'viruttam', like 'shloka',
is being used figuratively or 'metonymically' here to include plenty of things which are *not*
viruttam or shloka, speaking technically or strictly or metrically)
(but after all, who am i? and who cares?
... as i sing, literally, in this viruttam
see? there's the "weight of truth"
@Sachi_R also observes that singers may have "their own fav viruttams. Somewhat repetitive."
true.
ok, so somewhere in an earlier thread someone mentioned the more limited (some may say more *focused*) repertoire of an earlier generation of musicians, and how consequently the interest for the listener/rasika becomes the subtle variations betw. dates, venues, accompanists.
also true.
seems to me that in the halcyon days before the digital age, you could 'get away' with singing the same thing at every stop, then get back on the train and do it again tomorrow.
and by the way, nothing wrong with that. sometimes 'creativity' is overrated (says the guy who...)
"why are you playing the same note all the time?"
"others are still looking for it, whereas i have found it."
but anyway, as for me, i think there are certainly a few interesting quirks from occasion to occasion,
particularly somewhere in the first one i pulled off some kind of a magic trick in tilang
which i have never been able to reproduce!
(that concert was 4+ hours, and on the solstice, i.e. longest day of the year.
i think we were all in a trance ('melam') by viruttam time...
i suppose you would have to say that overall, though, i did sing this one "somewhat repetitively".
ok so here's another one with true "surprise raga changes", nodding to MDR, heavily
(that's the only way to 'nod' to mdr eh.)
also unique in my repertoire, in that for once i just sing the damn thing as is
(i am speaking loosely. it is in fact *not* a 'damn thing', but the opposite.)
so if you want to hear gautam tejas ganeshan sing some regular stuff,
here's your one and only chance (also w/ flute accompaniment):
https://soundcloud.com/gautamtejasganes ... ava-pujane
(i sang this same one at the musiri chamber concert, btw - same raga progression.
i believe MDR has sung the same thing w/ different ragas too.)
finaly,
@shankarank regarding "Pure melody is in a pure AkAram which is difficult to hold for too long, even in an Alapana"
This is *absolutely true*, and I learned it the hard way,
by doing a couple of *years* of concerts of just this -
nothing but akaram the whole time, including "schwakaram",
which is a gautam tejas ganeshan coinage,
'schwa' being the name for one of two special american phonemes,
the other being the "r" which is actually quite like "zh" (see 'murica')
Anyway so called 'pure music' was, in the end, a BIG FLOP, I think,
as if the music needed 'purifying' by
me - rather it was/is the other way around.
So eventually, wiser souls prevailed upon me to sing *something* instead of *nothing*,
those wiser souls including my own father,
and also including Warren Senders, who is just about as 'audacious' (
@rajeshnat) as me, plus he once told me he grows a majority of his own vegetables, which is commendable in its own right.
All of those schwakaram concerts were with misterdangam, btw, a.k.a. Anantha R. Krishnan.
It was pretty fun, I suppose, for audiences to see how he handled my firehose of nonsense.
(reminder that lyrics & more info are at my website:
https://gautamtejasganeshan.com
