Maestro Ilaiyaraja New Albums 2011 - Hello Jaihind / Sri Rama Rajyam

[Shankar]

I dont want to contest irir's point. But here are my observations on this subject. For IR who has grown up with folk and tribal music and has used them effectively to enthral an audience of 50million people for more than 30 years ..phrases like those mentioned do not have a negative connotation. Actually, I feel it is great he does not have this notion. Otherwise, it will be alienating a big section of our population which still has not tasted the fruits of globalization and is toiling in the hard sun, making a living farming dependent on seasonal rain (vaanam paartha boomi) and/or working in factories. These people have not attuned themselves to the latest hip-hop beats or R&B and are still happy with tha na na type of singing (mind you carnatic music was sung in our land using tha na before sa re ga ma pa da ni came in) and our rhythm patterns.

That said, I do want to see IR known internationally and hope many of IRIR's efforts bear fruit. I think if he works with people like Balki we will have song which are more tuned to western sensibilities (even in PAA mudi mudi is the pick in this aspect).

kiru - this is getting nowhere! do you mean to say that the toiling-in-the-sun crowd cannot appreciate a melody without 'dang dings' and 'cham cham chamakku chams' ?? didnt the same crowd love/enjoy a 'tharai mel pirakka vaithhaan' from KV Mahadevan or a "thirudaadhey paappa thirudaadhey". or a "budhhan gandhi yesu pirandhadhu bhoomiyil yedharkaaga ?" kind of songs which did not have such nonsense ??

isnt such a claim doing injustice to their appreciative ears and actually sound condescending/patronising ? salilda did not resort to such stuff in his evergreen 'madhumathi' which had lots of tribal/folk based songs !

IMO, the problem lies elsewhere - (1) IR doing tons of movies at a time, and often perhaps not having time for a complete song, and hence such 'phrases' probably came in haste - best example, the obnoxious 'pee peee pibbeeepee pee pee' chorus in the second interlude of the delightful 'vaa vaa manjal malare' from rajathi raaja! as i said, these things at the peak of his career cud be excused (though i dont see why coz, as a professional, he shd have given equal importance to each and every film he was doing, and gotten ridden of such phrases replacing them with some other stuff) - so that possibly explains the state in the 1980s; (2) but now, its an inexplicable sense of 'this is enough for you' to a 'yes boss, yes boss' nodding filmmaker - wud he have the guts to come up with such stuff with someone like kamal ? the 'bey bey peppey' wail in 'kombula poova sutthi' was very brief and strongly context-based and hence kamal probably allowed it

there is only a certain limit beyond which one cant explain the 'context-based' choice of crap IR often employs in his music even after 880 films! am glad that he didnt mess PAA with such stuff coz of the canvas and the wider reach he must have envisaged

ROFL on the pee...pee thing !!!

That "pee pee..." is such a sick thing in that song, that I hated that song just for that...I was embarrassed to play it in front of my mallu-land relatives (I used to stop the cassette, and play Side-B )