Next Installment of Songs

youtube and raaga.com serve as great stress busters.

The first sone i'm going to mention this time around is "Baala kanakamaya" composed by Tyaagaraja and set to aThANA raagam. The song had KamalaHaasan and Manju Bhargavi dancing in Salangai Oli: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OV5tOWZs4yk. ManjuBhargavi obviously comes out better :-) You can't help appreciating Kamal being reasonably good at BharatanAtyam as well. But it's S.Janaki's voice that stands head and shoulders above the rest. I have listened to Madurai Mani Iyer and Maharajapuram Santhanam sing this song. But S.Janaki is just way ahead of the pack. What a voice!! That effortless ease. Esp. while singing "Ela nI dayarAdu parAku jEsE vELa samayamu gAdu" meaning " Lord! How ("ela") will you ("nee") not ("raadu") shower your grace ("daya") ! This is not ("gaadu") the time ("samayamu") to be careless ("paraaku jese") and forget me! ". Another strange thing about this song is that it is usually sung with the anupallavi (Baala kanakamaya) to start with then going on to the pallavi (Ela nI), that is if you know what i mean!!

I'm going to pick "Manasunilpa Shakthi Leka Pothe" next. Again a Tyaagaraja kriti , set to aabhOgi. A mild digression -> There is a superb Tamil film song set to aabhOgi and sung by Balamurali Krishna namely "Thanga Radham Vandhadhu". Mom sings this at times and ends with “Enna oru Paattu”!! Coming back to Manasunilpa, i have heard it being rendered by various artists. No one does it better than Maharajapuram. I don't know for whatever reasons there are lot of Telugu words in this song which i find strange and kinda keep circling in the head for a long time for .e.g, "sOmidamma sogasugANDa kOritE sOmayAji svargArhuDaunO" meaning "If the wife of a sOmayAji desires a beau, will the husband (performing sOma sacrifice) be eligible for heaven?" Tyaagaraja trying at his hand at sarcasm!!

The last song in this installment is "rAma rAma guNasImA", composed by Swati ThirunaaL and set to the majestic Simhendra Madhyamam. MS popularised this song by singing it in Carnegie Hall. It will be available in any music shop worth its name. In fact, this album of hers "M. S. Subbulakshmi - Live at Carnegie Hall " is one of the her best selling albums, next only perhaps to her live recording at the United Nations. The Niraval with "muni mAnasa dhAma mrgamada " and reaching a crescendo with "hEmAmbarAri", well, you need to listen. BTW, one interesting sidelight is Swati ThirunaaL, king of Travancore, lived only for 34 years.