Music knocking at the heart

#Music - Strawberry kanne from Minsaara kanavu#

I hardly know any Tamil words save for those which sound like Malayalam give or take a syllable or two. And those who've watched a movie on TV will testify to their annoyance at my fast-forwarding through the songs even in Mallu movies, songs which as a rule detract from the plot (perhaps reflecting my voracious appetite for getting through books).

And those songs in the minor keys (those depressing, whining, moaning, mooing, screeching creatures) - let's just say I've forayed into the indoor (sometimes outdoor) sport of remote-control wrestling. But all this was before Rahman, a genius in composition and orchestration.

Minsaara kanavu - I've watched this movie in parts around 50 times already (it's even running now in the background). What's so wonderful about this movie is that I can follow this movie without the audio - the dialogue, music and effects themselves create a beautiful script on their own which add to the whole movie. This is like a dish so perfected that adding any more spices or ingredients would seemingly ruin it, however, Prabhudeva has dispelled that myth through his fresh and exciting dance moves which in themselves exhibit a thorough appreciation of Rahman's music and story line.

Let's say your metaphorical entertainment stomach is stuffed - what do we have here... Vairamuthu's lyrics. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles available online to Tamil movies, so I'm now teaching myself how to read and write Tamil. Little by little, I've been subtitling the movie so I can upload it. If anyone out there understands Tamil, and has a little free time, I would be grateful for some help.

Actually what I really intended to do when I started writing this was to analyse the music by Rahman from a Western classical music standpoint. (I'm afraid by the time I got to learning my first major scale in Carnatic music, I had already given up on it much to my regret. So my extent of Carnatic music knowledge is a huge void between Varaveena and film music.)

#Music - Tamizha tamizha from Roja#

With a little (actually a lot of) help from Sibelius and Keyless I've been trying to recreate Rahman's music. So my next effort will be to look at the music in Minsaara kanavu.