It starts off with a guitar figure in the F# major scale (F sharp). Every interlude is interesting (as usual) but I will focus specifically on the second interlude starting at 2:08. It’s the kind of soundtrack that Raja fans do like but would likely not rank it among his top 10 works (most definitely not top 5).īut even in a happy, romantic duet where Raja doesn’t have to do much to deliver a hit (voiced by SPB and S Janaki and pictured on Kamal and Sridevi), there is much going on that’s interesting. Let’s take one song dating to the start of his 80s juggernaut – Perai Sollava from the S P Muthuraman film Guru (starring Kamal Hassan and Sridevi). But his attempts at harmonic modulation are a much more pervasive part of his music and less talked about. He has done it in the melody itself a few times (known as grahabedam) and it’s very noticeable to Indian ears. Ilayaraja is extremely fond of modulation. Hence, the need for subversion.įor this post, let me focus on modulation. In short, he didn’t want to sound cliched. He has often voiced his preference for indulging in monkey business, by explaining an unusual musical choice as being driven by a need to avoid boredom. That’s just what it is such listeners have been pushed by Ilayaraja to embrace more complexity than they otherwise would have been prepared to but sometimes it jars (for them, from their point of view).īut at the same time, Raja was not satisfied with the way things were in Indian films or their music, as much as he revered his illustrious predecessors in Hindi and Tamil. A prominent music blogger found the modulation in Kalvane (Megha) too hot to handle, for instance. Anything too chromatic would have been dismissed out of hand. It had to be a subtle with our deep grounding in melodic traditions (as opposed to harmonic in the West), we Indians are very conservative in our music tastes. What enticed them to listen to his songs is a deep but subtle subversiveness in his music. But that would not have moved the needle for the audience as a whole in the 80s. Yes, Ilayaraja used these techniques in a much more learned and trained way (he kind of had to be able to, given the speed at which he was writing music). With or without counterpoint, ornate orchestration was not new in Indian film music by any means. I have frequently pointed to songs like Mandram Vandha Thendralukku as counter-examples to demolish the violin-tabla man argument (the song has neither violin nor tabla). Well aware of this argument, the anti-Raja side constructs an elaborate conspiracy theory based on how he punished anybody who dared against him and manipulated people into siding with him even when these songs that continue to find listeners on the internet were actually flops, ya know! And yes, this is an actual argument against him from a Rahman fan, not making this up, this ain’t no strawman that I am assailing.īut what if the problem is the focus on ornate complexity is incomplete in terms of accounting for what makes his music compelling? And I have long suspected that to be the case. But if this was the case, he would not have been giving hit after hit – whether in rural based films, city films, art projects, mass star vehicles or, well, classical based sagas (Salangai Oli, Sindhu Bhairavi, Unnal Mudiyum Thambi). And it plays right into the ill framed Raja detractor (may or may not be Rahman fan!) critique of his work – that Raja simply dresses up melodies with too many instruments and makes it sound rather heavy going. It’s all to the good.īut it only accounts for the ‘visible’ (or should I say audible) aspect of his complexity. Much is written about Ilayaraja’s unprecedented use of counterpoint (well, at least the frequency and complexity of his usage of it while not necessarily being the first to appropriate it in an Indian music context) or fugue or other Western classical compositional devices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |