Entries from May 2009
Tamil film industry has its share of movie directors who are one hit wonders. Irrevocably spoilt by such fleeting success, they realize the rest of their career as one long list of blunders. Such visual diarrhea piggy back on the best from the Maestro, often the only contribution of those movies to the Tamil art world. Our claim on his music has been our undeserved birthright.
That the Maestro had obliged a million times and more to such non-entities could be taken as a sign of confused values, or mark of his indefatigable creative baton. To paraphrase the Bard, the quality of Maestro’s mercy is not strained; it droppeth as a gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath – fertile or barren. Abandon hope, all ye enter the movie hell for watching such a movie. The music shall remain bound by the curse of the visuals.
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Categories: Carnatic Music · Muse
Tagged: choreography, cinema music, classical music, hey ram, ilaiyaraaja, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kamal hassan, maestro, mahendran, manirathnam, mullum malarum, music, music directors, music reviews, rajinikanth, tamil film music, tamil music, thalapathy
Carnot Engines are efficient and ideal. And unreal. The rest including the now dead steam engines are real and inefficient. Likewise, ‘translation engines’ are observed to be non-Carnot with inevitable finite informational entropy generated during their operation.
We are aware of the near impossibility of exact translation from one language to another perhaps since the times we realized two distinct languages – like human speech and a bird’s song. It is only natural then to lament the futility of translating creative expression in one art form (music, song) into another (visuals), without an associated loss of information and joy. Nevertheless, in the hoary culture that Tamilians are familiar with, we have documented successful synergy between nAtiyam (dance) and isai (music) or even iyal (theatre) and isai (music).
When modern Tamil music has its composers and loadstones well connected to the roots and worthy of that hoary culture, it is a shame to prematurely pose our hands heavenwards with an abhinayam expressing exasperation and epitomizing the incapacity in Tamil movies (or theatre or simply visual arts) to translate music into meaningful visuals.
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Categories: Carnatic Music · Muse
Tagged: choreography, cinema music, classical music, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kamal hassan, maestro, music, music directors, music reviews, poonthalir aada song, rajinikanth, santhana katre song, sathya, tamil film music, tamil music
There lies more than one potential and potent sociology (or even neuroscience) research problem in the contrast of tastes supposedly exhibited by the Tamil speaking populace.
Regardless of their education and social stature, they display humongous tolerance short of apathy and even relishing proclivity short of crassness to gaudy and illogical visuals called movies. Coexisting on the other hand is their nuanced, connoisseurship musical taste irrespective of, again, their education and social stature or even extent of musical knowledge.
Art is subjective and art-forms doesn’t perhaps require logic or method for its appreciation. But it beats my common sense to pulp the artsy subjectivity of the common Tamilian that righteously celebrates the Carnatic Music Trinities or their follow-up acts culminating in modern musical giants like G. Ramanathan, K. V. Mahadevan, M. S. Viswanathan, Ilaiyaraja, is the same subjective source that ‘appreciates’ the homogeneously simpleton Tamil movies. Exceptions exist in exceptional movies but their contribution to Tamil visual art-form is perhaps outrageously meager when compared to the contribution of the associated musical scores to modern Tamil music.
The musical genius of Ilaiyaraja is often mired by the associated movie visuals. Purist fan of his replace often with usually in the previous sentence, while ‘fanatics’ like me would replace often with always.
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Categories: Carnatic Music · Muse
Tagged: cinema music, dharma yudham, ilaiyaraja, ilaiyaraja music review, ilayaraja, kajuraho kanavile, maestro, music, music directors, music reviews, rajinikanth, santhana katre, sridevi, tamil film music, tamil music, thanikkatu raja
