The Indian Fine Arts Academy, San Diego has been doing a wonderful job of getting some of the best artistes from India to perform here. My first year here, and I thoroughly enjoyed it- felt like home away from home.
The highlights this time were M.S.Gopalakrishnan and Dr.M.Narmada - violin duet, S.Sowmya and Sudha Raghunathan - vocal solo concerts and Ravikiran and Irshad Khan with a jugalbandhi. While they were all fantastic, some particular pieces deserve a special mention in my opinion.
While Narmada's purvikalyani was outstanding, Irshad Khan played a beautiful solo in Rakeshri- one of his own compositions. I loved the choice of raag! The jugalbandhi defied tradition and they chose the unconventional Kharaharapriya/ Kaafi thaat. Needless to say, absolutely brilliant performance (although I wish Irshad Khan rested his hands for a bit more, allowing the others to play :) )
What I liked best about Sowmya was the piece in Varali (Ka va va)- although not a favourite for me, I loved the way she handled it. The swarams were so intelligently structured, alternating between different gathis/ nadais.
The grand finale was Sudha Raghunathan. I don't have to do more than just mention the name to convey anything about how the concert was. Perfect choice of songs/ ragas- most were favourites :) Maathe in Khamas, Shrichakraraja in Shivashakthi, elaboration of Shankarabharanam followed by Swararagasudha, innudayabarade, bhavayami gopalabalam and kurai ondrum illai were the highlights. The last two nearly moved me to tears and left me craving M.S.Subbulakshmi's voice (which I am listening to as I type this). Some songs are immortalized by some people and you don't want to hear them in anyone else's voice. Nevertheless, Sudha of course did an amazing job.
Sigh... all good things come to an end.
10 comments:
Thats nice to hear. Wish such concerts happen at my place too.
Happy you attended them and had a wonderful time.
Hello,
For the past few months I have been avidly researching/collecting ragas for very contemporary film music. The interest had always been there, but what made me take action was after seeing Rahman win the Oscars for his music. I then realised that the attention of the west is going to be on Indian music, particularly on south indian music, and I felt that it was pivotal at this time to establish a website where the ancient heritage of this music be made available to them by first definining the ragas for very contemporary tamil music that uses the pallatable sounds appreciated on an international level. To this effect, I began collecting, and in the process PhilRamble directed me to your blog. I notice your own passion to make carnatic ragas and interest in ragas available to the modern generation. So far I have collected Ragas for around 500 songs (And since I am very much a beginner in identifying ragas, I have been relying on the experts and their defintions).
However, even the experts often contradict each other, so I do an enormous amount of research at any time where I notice a contradiction in order to discover what the actual raga for a given song may be. Your blog has been a godsend and a fountain of information in this regard.
The reason for writing to you now is to ask for your collaboration on my little project. There are some songs that I am passionate about that are very contemporary to which there is no information about their ragas. As a starting point, I have put the first 108 that came to mind on a blog, (along with the audio of the song), for experts to take a listen and identify their ragas. Using this information, I would then set up a website where people from any country can come and become introduced to Indian film music, ragas - and finally to the carnatic renditions of the ragas themselves. I humbly request your assistance.
The webblog where I have posted 108 songs with audio is:
http://vajrakrishna.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/exploring-and-identifying-ragas-a-collaborative-project/
I would be happy to share the 500 songs to which I have already collected raga names with you. Besides, I would very much appreciate your confirmation if my information is correct.
With best regards,
Vajra Krishna.
Was very nice to read this Sindhuja. All those listed on Sudha;s concert list are my favs too :-( Well, anyways, I am happy I could attend atleast one concert in december 08 when I was in India despite Ayush being around LOL
Also, a question-- were you referring to shrichakra raaja simhaasaneshwari (in raagamaalika) in your post or is it another on in the raagam Shivashakti?
Hi Vajra Krishna, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment- and its nice to see such enthusiasm. I will certainly take a look at your list and let you know if I find anything amiss, within my limited knowledge.
But you might wanna know that there have been many such efforts on the internet. One of them is here: http://tfmpage.com/forum/classical.html
Another one: http://www.geocities.com/ilaiyaragam/
Good luck with your collection! :)
Meera- thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Concert-bOdhu Ayush um kooda serndhu thannoda kacheri pannitha ;) illa samaththa kaekka vittudha :)
No, I'm not talking of the ragamalika. This is quite a rare song, a GNB composition in the (again rare) raga shivashakthi. Nityashree has sung a Bharatiyar song "thaga-thaga-thaga-thagathagavenRAdOvOm" in the same raga in the album called "Ragam"
Hi Sindhuja,
Actually I spent around 2-3 months avidly researching what was already available on the net, and actually used the two links you mentioned as reference manuals while exploring Ragas. The thing is, from all my investigation, there really is no list for very contemporary music... hardly any that touches the scope of Rahman, Vidyasagar's or Yuvan Shankar's music... my list is a careful choosing of favourites that has a western appeal.
I see, that's nice. Will be glad to be of any help.
Hi Sindhuja,
I happened to stumble upon your site and listened to some of your songs. As much as you'd have gotten tired listening to this compliment - you have an amazing talent!
I live in the Boston area and give music performances with a local group. Here's some shameless self-promotion!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfpooORoHRU
Now, how does one become an audio-blogger? Any tips/suggestions that you may have would be welcome.
Thanks and keep the good songs coming!
Raghu
Hi Raghu, thanks for stopping by. I watched your video- you sing really well and have a good voice! All the best.
There have been quite a few tutorials on audioblogging written by some "veteran" bloggers. Check these out:
1. http://jocalling.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-to-do-audio-blogging-or-music.html
2. http://swara.blogspot.com/2008/07/tutorial-recording-your-voice-along.html
3. http://blog.gksden.org/?p=260
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