Sunday, May 2, 2010

Coffee flavored Cleverfolk



This category is a catch all that has traces of any of the 9 other flavors!

Aayiram Thamarai Motukkale from Alaigal Oiyvathillai (1981) uses the kummi style composition completely set to subhapanthuvarali ragam. It’s hard to classify this track as it has folk, Carnatic and Western flavors supported by chorus!


Ilangathu Veesuthe from Pithamagan (2003) has folk lyrics, beautiful western orchestration for a karaharapriya ragam based tune. Again another quintessential Cleverfolk that has Western, Carnatic flavors for a folk lyric!


Thendralai kandu kolla from Nilave Mugam Kaatu (1999) – the interlude, is a clear demo by Raja of a light music piece, a sloka and a folk piece all overlapping. He goes back to his old famous quote that all musical systems are the same. A light music piece where Raja throws a slokam in parallel with a folkish female voices!

In the track Raman kadhai kelungal in the film Sippikkul Muthu, Raja uses the folk technique of kadha kalashebham – conventional religious storytelling. However, he sets the track to the reetigowlai Carnatic ragam. The lyric is not folk, the technique is, but the track is set to a Carnatic ragam – only Raja delivers such surprises.

Thendral Vandhu Theendum Podhu from Avatharam (1995) – the lyrics are folk, but the orchestration is completely Western, the rhythm arrangement is Western and Raja throws also chorus into the mix, not to mention a few counterpoints into a folk track!

There are several tracks of Raja which are set to the folkish style lullaby when the lyric itself is not folkish! Example, Thooliyile Aada Vandha from Chinna Thambhi (1991).

The clip below has three tracks. It starts off with ‘Aayiram Thamarai Motukkale’ followed by ‘Thendralai kandu’ and finally ‘Raman kadhai kelungal’. Observe the variety of flavors Raja throws withi just these three – kummi, subha panthuvarali, Sanskrit slokam, folk rendition, western orchestration, kadha kalashebam, reetigowlai all in those 3 minutes. That's like being inside a coffee grinder with flavors ranging from Brazil to Coorg!




 
I have attempted to provide a menu with some examples of the Raja Cleverfolk flavors. By no means is this complete. He took the basic ice cream and flavored it 6 ways to Sundae (pun intended) and he is fighting the world that he is not the first ice cream maker.

Though we have extensively analyzed Raja’s folk work, this is just one approach. It does not cover several aspects of folk music as that was not the intent. However, most of the analysis on Raja’s folk are serious ones and leave out his various flavoring to the folk idiom. I hope the readers enjoyed this fun ice cream trip.



1 comment:

venkat said...

Dear Mr.Ravi, Hats off to you for your good work. For the last 2 days i have been going first to last last to first of your blog, search and download unheard songs. Of course i downloaded everything in your blogs. Will put down my phone after read all pages. When i searching some song mentioned in your page i came along ponmegalai as suggestion. I didn't hear about this film by ragadevan. Perhaps you can listen it.
Even though you said you have taken 1 3rd of songs, I would like to suggest kovil pura songs.

It would be good to suggest from your side about maha 2014' s work.
Remastered 24bit songs of ragadevan( I prefer this name as i think only a god could do the works done by him)

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZN495CCmv6gpJuZf4yUdIw1lYdr95MVk

Thanks in advance
Venkat.