Ilayaraja's Melodies - IX
1 Comments Published by Prasad Venkat on Monday, December 24, 2007 at 3:05 PM.
1. Thendral Vandhu, Avatharam - For days, I tried to convert the sound waves impacting my ear drums into words, but somehow found them falling extremely short of the exquisiteness of the song. I even asked for help from two guys whose knowledge of music is way better than mine. After sinking and soaking in the song, they gave me blank stares. With my very limited ability to express and even limited understanding of music and with trepidation I started verbalizing how I felt after listening to this song, but I had to stop my futile exercise as I wasn't doing justice. Make whatever you want to make out of from the below mentioned paragraph. But I'm happy that I stopped short of paraphrasing, because sometimes what's left unsaid is beautiful than saying it.
The opening score, which is a sandwich of violin & guitar between a multi-layered chorus is something of an exercise - not only to future composers, but even to listeners who are interested in tracing the tail of every note. Its quite complicated to appreciate the beauty when I try to single out a voice or an instrument, but when listened to as a song, the completeness of the union of individual musical instruments just blows me away. Talk of fusion: the song is very richly orchestrated with western style written all over it, but the lyrics lazily wallow in a folk soup (evarum sollamale kuyilellam thena padudhu). The soaring grandeur of the song represents the height and range of the imagination of a blind girl keen on grasping the idea of colours; and the association of a hue with touch, smell, feelings, thoughts and sound in an abstract discussion between two folks, in their very own folk style is as rich as the orchestration of this composition.
The opening score, which is a sandwich of violin & guitar between a multi-layered chorus is something of an exercise - not only to future composers, but even to listeners who are interested in tracing the tail of every note. Its quite complicated to appreciate the beauty when I try to single out a voice or an instrument, but when listened to as a song, the completeness of the union of individual musical instruments just blows me away. Talk of fusion: the song is very richly orchestrated with western style written all over it, but the lyrics lazily wallow in a folk soup (evarum sollamale kuyilellam thena padudhu). The soaring grandeur of the song represents the height and range of the imagination of a blind girl keen on grasping the idea of colours; and the association of a hue with touch, smell, feelings, thoughts and sound in an abstract discussion between two folks, in their very own folk style is as rich as the orchestration of this composition.
I used to love Ilayaraja's classics. "idhu oru pon maalai pozhudu" being a firm favourite. but latey, I don't know, something's not comepletely there