Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Saaz ki aawaaz

Ustaadji nahin rahe. Shehnai will never sound the same.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Some banter from past

"At the risk of bullying you, r u referring to SS's devi brova samayamide?(chintamani - shanmukhapriya)" asked PRC once when I was referring to that kriti sung by Raghavan Manian, not in Chintamani but in quite a different raga in this post. Chakri had told me that this kriti was in RAmapriya after listening to it for a short while.

One more twist to the tale. A book called "Raganidhi" by B.Subba Rao is with me for a few days courtesy the senior-most member of the Bangalore chapter of SPIC-MACAY. That book has this under ChintAmani:

"There is a raga Chintaramani which is a janya of the 52nd Melakarta Ramapriya. This is altogether different from Chintamani."

Did Raghavan Manian actually sing 'Devi Brova' in ChintarAmani, instead of ChintAmani??

May be He, who surveys the highest heavens surely knows, or may be even He does not! (RigVeda, X.129-7)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sketchy once wrote a review of the audio of "Taj Mahal". Regd. the song 'Mumtaz tujhe dekha', Sketchy guessed that it was Kamavardhini scale andI had opined that the song also had a pinch of Behag. It turns out that the main raga of the Poorvi thaat (Kamavardhini, 51st Mela), the raga Poorvi, does have M1 (Shuddha Madhyam) in its midst. Only, the uccharana of the final g3 (p m2 g3 m1 g3) in the song is rather un-Poorvi-ish. So the song is neither in Puriya Dhanashree (with a pinch of behag), nor in Shree, or in Kamavardhini. It seems to be in Poorvi.

But wait! Come to the charaNam and you will notice the usage of the two Madhyams "m1 m2 m1"-- this is raga Lalith, another raga of Poorvi thaat! Wonderful!

All in all, most of the ragas in the movie album, except for the Ajoyda's effort at producing an uncommentable piece, hail from Poorvi that. Hmm!!