Saturday, March 2, 2013

Concluding notes on Raja’s Fl(choral) world


Over the past two years or so, we went through some analysis of Raja’s work in the area of choral arrangement. Raja has used every form of human voice to enhance his compositions. There is no composer before or after him who has done so much work on choir, Western or Indian. What is unique about him is the ease with which such complex arrangements are made possible. He has a talented group of choir singers who are trained both with Indian and Western singing. While he has his preferences, it is hard to argue if he did not touch an area of choral arrangement. 

As with everything in his orchestration, mixing genres, transitioning from one to the other, all come easy to the genius. There are several categories, where he has experimented for the first time in Indian film music. These are not confusing fusion arrangements, but carefully designed process that appeals to the listener’s ear at the end. He is like the micro-chip maker. Fusing gold and sand was possible with the microchip – fusing folk, western and Carnatic and scat is possible for this music chip maker! Some day, there may be a composer who may beat him in popularity; I am sure, there will be no one who can educate a several generations with examples on how some hard paths can be traversed in the world of music. 

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