video from my geetanjali show

https://www.elmorajah.com/geetanjali/video/enavalay.wmv

 

Check out the video, you were on the keyboard...right? The singer UnniKrishan, was that the same person we were dicussing?

 

lol the singer is vijay. unnikrishnan was original singer he is too good and got national award for the song. yea i was on the keyboard doing basic chord work.

 

hey jay(lol that rhymes)..just checked out the vid. Though I didnt understand the lyrics and this was my first carnatic experience I must say that I was kinda impressed.
Very tight performance, keyboards were right on.
Btw, who was that female vocalist?...she was kinda hot u know...an introduction if u may please

 

^^ i can hook u up with her husband if u want

 

https://www.elmorajah.com/geetanjali/video/sandai_koli.wmv
https://www.elmorajah.com/geetanjali/video/athoantha.wmv
https://www.elmorajah.com/geetanjali/video/roja.wmv

Some more videos.

 

1) there was no carnatic in any of the clips
2) the female singer was abaswaram
3) Jay was awesome as usual...

Its pretty sad. The instrumental part was rite on, but the lead singers, except for ennavale singer, were pathetic!!!

 

@jay-lolol
@harini-ohhhk, then what for of music was the 1st clip,ennavale??

 

a film song is a film song.
carnatic song is a carnatic song.
a film song may be carnatic based, but it doesnt become a pure carnatic song right? that is what i meant.

 

so if a carnatic song was taken for a film then it wouldnt remain a carnatic song

 

if the song is composed as a carnatic song, then yes it would remain a carnatic song.
But this song is not purely carnatic. actually, even songs that are more heavily influenced by classical music, come into the semiclassical category. eg. singaravelan, the songs in thillana mohanambal..and so on.
i guess it depends on perspective.

 

so then what is a carnatic song??(in simple terms please)

 

A carnatic song is Classical music. Most of the songs are devotion based- as in sung in praise of God, although there are songs where you see people singing, lets say, pining for her lover or whatever. They are based in a particular ragam, and talam. ofcourse you have ragamalikas and talamalikas also.

lets see..its like u have western classical music, vs pop music..
i m not sure if its the best analogy to compare carnatic with film music but thats the best i could think of.

help jay?

 

I think what harini is trying to say is in carnatic music one shouldn't have any off notes when you stick to a raagam (anniya swaram?) I don't know carnatic much though I like to listen. Carnatic also has a rule of "approach" which says how to progress intervals and what sort of gamakam to provide that brings the characteristic of a raagam. Shankarabharanam for example has all notes of a major scale. Still, there are are certain rules to how Ga is sung when you go up and down. A mozart's song based on Major scale won't be sankarabaranam because interval jumps there don't fit in the rules laid out for that raagam. I would recommend Prasanna's guitar instruction DVD at guitarprasanna.com . He explains it clearly the things I said (I learnt it from him of course).

BTW, I personally don't think devotion is an important factor in Carnatic music. Devotion may aid creativity, but is not a necesary ingredient. For singing "soulfully", yes - you need to "feel" music and devour each note, but that can be done by anyone with no belief in god. Its human to like music, I don't want to bring greater forces at play here. All IMHO.

 

So u basically are forced by rule to stick in a particular scale??

 

kishmu..i didnt mean devotion in order to sing. i meant most of the songs are composed in the gods name(maha ganapathim, meenakshi etc).

 

Denis, Stick to a particular raagam and not bring anniya swaram. I may be wrong though...

Harini - point taken.

 

yea u r rt, carnatic music is a product of its times, hence its essentialy a hindu-devotional art form in its purest form, and bhakti and devotion were the motivating factor of all the great composers. that was then. u got similar ancient religion based artforms prevalant in other societies as well. but as i said that was then. this is 21st century secular world.

Now there are 2 schools of people in the world.
1> The purists and
2> the Innovators

I think both schools are equally important for music.
if not for purists, there wont be no carnatic music today.. recording was invented only in the 20th century.. till then the purists carried over the tradition of passing the krutis and other compositions in their purest form to the next generation.
in spite of that we have lost many aspects of carnatic music to time already.
for example a lot of ancient instruments have become extinct. there are only references to them in scriptures but no pics.. for example thyagaraja played a bass guitar kinda instrument (i am not making this up) and its no longer in use no one knows how to build it.. so we would never know the beauty of this accompniment instrument which thyagaraja used to play while singing.

The innovators are the cool kind who will experiment with music.. and some of then become these greats who would be idolized by purists of the future.

So even though there is lot of friction between these two schools, both are equallly important for music.. one for sustainability and survivabilty, and the other for evolution of music.

And I cant belive such an opiniated person like me has posted this post :shock:

Jay

 

I don't want to get into that purist/innovator talk again! :shutup:

anyway, anniya swarams are allowed in carnatic (thats y they have a name..!) but there are also rules on which anyaswaram can come in which raaga (more like guidelines rather than rules)

Mahaganapathim is in Naattai but has anniya swaram (dha) in the chittaswaram part of the song.

 

Cool ananth - that clarifies. Yes I know there are anniya swarams - but thought its less prevalent in carnatic as one would hear in a film song.