IR News and Other Titbits

[app_engine]

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/showbiz/...ngs-37745.html

mandRam vandha thendRalukku = cheeni kum...

[vigneshram]

I've posted a photo in my blog. Identify the little boy and post comments...

http://vigneshram.blogspot.com/2007/04/guess-who.html

or www.vigneshram.com

[raja_fan]

It should be Karthik Raja ?

[vigneshram]

It should be Karthik Raja ?

No, Not KarthikRaja

[dakaltiz]

then is it yuvan?

[vigneshram]

It should be Karthik Raja ?

No, Not KarthikRaja

Check out for yourself and with an interview scan from olden days Dailythanthi

http://vigneshram.blogspot.com/2007/...sed-right.html
or

www.vigneshram.com

[muzammil_fr]

A Gift For IRFANS from ARRFANS
Inimey Naangathaan
Inimey Naangathaan - V4 is a 96-minute Tamil feature film to be released worldwide by late January 2007.

The film has several firsts to its credit.

This is India's first animated movie in a regional language.

India's first non-mythological animated film with original story line

1st 3D Tamil animation movie with 2K resolution

At par with International animation standards

1st movie to release in analogue/digital/IMAX & 3D versions.

1st Tamil movie to release in many languages worldwide.

The movie has the association of several leading professionals like maestro Ilayaraja, editor Lenin, dance master Shiv Shankar and lyricist Vaali.

Click here http://www.uyirvani.com/forums/index...howtopic=16865 for Thirai Kannotam (Review of this movie) from sun tv, lot of clips are in video, Enjoy Guys.

[crvenky]

Maestro's life history (part 1 of the series) in Tamil:

http://www.dailythanthi.com/article....date=4/23/2007

[Sanjeevi]

Maestro's life history (part 1 of the series) in Tamil:

http://www.dailythanthi.com/article....date=4/23/2007

I think, already dailythanthi has published the same article series. Now they started for second time. Needless to say, Ilaiyaraja is one of commercial elements/icons of TN.

[rajasaranam]

an Article/answer in a forum which i immensly enjoyed

WHAT IS INDIAN SYMPHONY AND WHY IS THIRUVASAKAM IN SYMPHONY SPECIAL THAN OTHER FUSION MUSIC COMPOSITIONS?

MODERN MUSIC THOUGHTS IN MAESTRO ILAIYARAAJA

“If you are patient enough to read you may learn a lot I guess”

First of all Indian music’s foundations are horizontal structures called melody. Since it concentrates on melody alone enormous experiments were conducted by many generations, before several unknown centuries, to build up melodic systems and its usage. Western music’s specialty is it’s vertical structures, the harmony but also involves melody. The melody the west uses is different from the Indian melody because of the usage of scales and tones. Though the Indian musicians felt the harmony by mind while they created melodic compositions, they didn’t try to introduce harmony into their music systems and just concentrated on making the melodic usage more and more complex in its content and easier in its usage and understanding. There are certain ways and methods of music education by which Indian music education can be learnt in a decade but the to what extent is always a doubt because it has formatted a system for itself which includes all natural sound substances available in nature (which our ear hears) whereas the west operates on fixed sounds following an uniquely accepted music system all over the world “The chromatic scale system”. Though music is periodic and involves octaves (stayi), the number of scales (ragas) experimented by many folks is unimaginable and almost the Indian music grammar covers almost all harmonic contents of tones. For example the “Moving tones”(Gamakkam) where different types of shaking the fixed note (in relation to chromatic) takes place where different additions and omissions of harmonic contents may result in different ragas. Infact the truth is Melody is made up of harmony. Harmony is the mother of melody. The melody and harmony are inseparable. It’s a very tough concept to understand but it’s the truth.

Astounding!!! And that’s why to master Indian music it will take almost 3/4th of your life. Not only this there are many more complex rules, which minutely makes one raga different from other raga. For example the ascending and descending of scales (arohanam and avarohanam). The universal pentatonic scale is referred to “raga mohanam in Indian music” but to say the truth its different because of some more minute melodic (harmonic) details which chromatic fails to give.

Many more complex rules govern Indian classical music system. As how difficult it’s to perform a grand symphony, it’s very very hard to become a genius in Indian classical music. Indian classical music is mastered by pundits who will always hesitate to enter the western classical domain as its one another tough music system. One can
hardly point out music composers who are really really into both classical music domains. Maestro Ilaiyaraaja is therefore ahead of all music composers.

Western classical composition and making grand symphony needs brainwork to harmonize the contents in brain and write as score. Mastering Indian classical to the maximum possible extent are not possible in ones life time of 80 years. Ilaiyaraaja has achieved this in 50 years. “Mel harmony by Ravikiran is great work left for humanity but still I doubt if Maestro Ravikiran can handle his own western classical symphonic composition and orchestration. Besides these Ilaiyaraaja has almost touched all parts of the world either jazz, blues, souls, Chinese or German folk all in his film scores.

His non-film albums like “chamber welcomes thiagarajar” is a blow for “Western classical musicians who believe that their music system is the greatest as the notes played in the composition will make one think if its fixed note or a moving note”. To say one more truth, the absolute pitch musicians don’t play the perfect pitch in
reality. The vibrato which our ear like = absolute pitch+ a slight deviation from absolute pitch. If this slight deviation is not there, we wont like the sound. We like string effect. What happens in a string section of orchestra? Each string player play notes slightly deviating from the note on the score sheet. All these random pitch
variations add up causing the effect, making us feel the great sound. So its not the argument that we humans like big sounds.

Mozart I love you is based on an assumption if “Mozart plays kalyani rag, I guess. Not sure of it.
Watch the mathematical musician Bach playing moving notes. “I met Bach in his house” is a fusion of Indian rag with Bach’s compositions.
Hear “You can't be free” and just you could not believe how Indian tones are harmonized with fixed tonal system. Listen how he tries to avoid fixed notes in weak accented beats thereby intelligently succeeds in harmonizing the raga with a string quartet. He introduces silence where fixed note can’t be harmonized with moving note (the gammkam)
“Song of the soul” is an Indian classical jazz-fusion.

The exceptional music composer’s compositions have gone unnoticed. The Illaiyaraja Grand symphony 1 is not released and the reason should be the attitude of Western classical musicians who could not hear anything other than that tones fixed in the London music conference, May 1939.

I hope folks can now understand who is Ilaiyaraaja and why he is special. There are many in the world that could write music by mind but most of them would be fixed note specialists. Ask them to write an Asian classical-Western classical fusion, they could not as what they believe as music is that 12 notes and that’s it.Ilaiyaraaja can write for a total western classical orchestra and also for a fusion orchestra, which means all natural sounds, can be represented on sheet by his mind.

Do you now feel the difference?

If you ask a question “Friend!! Many have did fusion music; my reply would be “sir! Most of the fusion would be fusion of either American and German or Russian and French all of which are based on fixed tonal system, which is of course quite possible if you could understand the music culture of both domains but this is a fusion of entirely different systems, which are strongly experimented in the past. Fusing folk with a classical system is great but also not as challenging as this “thiruvaskam in symphony” does as folk music is not much experimented with much grammatical expectations”. You are free to compose the way you want. You are free to mould the music, twist it the way you want. Western classical and blues, jazz-fusion is also kindred.

To me Ilaiyaraaja is the world’s best Composer because I think this way: What if Tamil is the world’s highly spoken language and Tamil culture is widely followed on earth. Mr.Thanikachalam is not going to say Mozart as the best composer and Mr.Parthasarathy is not going to mention “The Beatles music troupe”. Ilaiyaraaja is the single sole man (not a music band of 4) who does all by himself from composition, arrangement, conducting to sometime even sitting in the console mixing tracks. His ideas ranges from Indian, western, American to computer music.
If you could then argue there will be more competition and more talents, if Tamil becomes world’s highly used culture, I can take India musicians into account. Nobody in India has satisfied common man, Indian pundits and foreign pundits at the same time. Give me one great example I will accept my argument and surrender. But unfortunately you can’t even mention one such composer other than ilaiyaraaja and therefore my argument is proved. Ilaiyaraaja should be seen from different points to understand his genius.

He is a special composer of our age and we are failing to give him the right acknowledgement. For me stevie wonder is great composer and singer and I love his voice in “I just want to say I love you” but my culture want “yengae sellum indha padai” the maestro’s trademark voice in me. I’m from Indian culture and who is “Schubert for tom”, so is Ilaiyaraaja for me. Even if you throw out the culture discussion, 900 movies in a span of 25 years. All are not one and a half hour movies but 3 hours. All done in 3 to 10 days time. Neither Beethoven, Neither Michael Jackson, Neither Beatles, Neither Elvis Presley, James Horner could accomplish this. Leave out our local music composers; they haven’t touched all classical domains in the world.

Don’t bring the old film works inspired by world musicians, which are few in number. That old ilaiyaraaja is gone before 20 years. Who is ilaiyaraaja now? How did he turn himself to a music colossus?

Ask a foreigner what is Indian music? He replies so naively “sitar and tabla music”. I don’t blame the genius of Ravi Shankar or zakir Hussein. Many argue that they were the musicians who took our music to foreign. My answer to them is “No”. They didn’t take our music to them but they created a “Curiosity in foreigners about Indian music”. A theoretical explanation before a raga concert in “Ohio concert hall” will never make a foreigner understand our music but a practical composition made like thiruvasakam in symphony or “you can’t be free” or “study for violin” will achieve it. Those compositions haven’t reached even Indians and that’s because we are poor souls to acknowledge great composers but future will certainly hail Maestro Ilaiyaraaja’s compositions. May be after a century.



I believe that Ilaiyaraaja is most modern in his music thoughts but personally I believe music is nothing but sound and music came first and then singing. The evolution process would explain everything. I?m against ilaiyaraaja in only some details like music comes by Birth. It?s true to some extent that some genetic factors are involved in making complete musicians of future but you don?t have all ready in you. Music comes by learning. Another one negative, which Ilaiyaraaja says, ?Computers don?t generate emotions?. Thayaga brahmam didn?t perform with a mike; Bach didn?t have ?Euphonix? recording system to record his D minor. Today we need electronics for all music, we need digital systems to record music, all digital things are computers and I feel no way we can predict if Computers could or cant generate emotions. If the entire music world revolves round Digital music, why don?t machines generate emotions? Experiments will always turn into something. Earth turned from flat to round; Moon turned from non-reachable to reachable. Though we live in an unknown world, logically some approximations have made us feel developments. To say the truth I would like to bring to notice of Maestro that scientists have successfully made computers to generate emotions to some extent. Maestro is always young in his learning for music so he will like this news. Computer music and synthesized music may not be liked by many because it doesn?t come from soul or the compositions by language programming are not artistic but it?s a start for human?s different approach to music turning away from performance, production and playing and who knows it may take us to new ways and approaches in music. I?m personally very modern in my thinking for music. I see music as sound and not music as music. Were the first musicians on earth were born with a trombone?

The original page can be found here:
http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-an...?msg_id=003ZrO