Basketball, Meri Jaan

"Basketball, Meri Jaan" is a short (~5 min) film/ documentary made by Veena Hampapur of UCLA. It's about how her mother, Yashodhara, who immigrated to the US 30 years ago, rediscovers her lifelong passion for professional sports and builds for herself a strong, special connection with the local sports community.

I'm happy to have played a small role in the project: Veena has used a short clip of the alap in this recording of mine as the background music for a scene in the film.

The film is now doing the rounds at many a festival including the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival, and the Asian Americans in Media Film Festival. I wish Veena and the team the very best. I'll probably share a link to the film once it's done with the festivals and officially released online. In the meanwhile, do "like" them on Facebook if you wish: https://www.facebook.com/BasketballMeriJaan

Song for documentary on Shri S. Rajam

Today, Chennai saw the release of a DVD production on the life and works of Shri S. Rajam, renowned painter and Carnatic musician. It is directed by Lalitharam and Kaanthan Balakrishna Shastri, the music is composed by Murali Venkatraman, with lyrics by Hari Krishnan. All of their efforts are commendable and I urge you all to buy the DVD from kalakendra.com. Since Rajam was an unabashed proponent of Vivadi ragas - which back in the day were considered ominous for some reason - Ram requested Murali to compose most of the songs in Vivadi ragas as a tribute to the man. Here is a song that I have sung in the raga Maararnjani.

I had to fight hard with the beastly self critic in me to post this but oh well, here it is anyway, for the record.



The rest of the compositions are wonderful, in ragas including Gamanashrama, Suryakantham, Gangeyabhushani, and a Gruhabhedam from Mohanam to Kamaprabha; and sung by some amazing singers including Adithi Devarajan, Karthik Nagarajan and Murali himself and are all available on youtube. Please do check them out as well.

Happy Birthday to my Guru

Here's my first attempt at proper website design: http://www.lalgudirajalakshmi.com. This had been on my task list for way too long and I finally got down to doing it and showed it to my Guru today, on her birthday. So glad that it made her very happy.
She's a wonderful artist and Guru and an amazing woman. So please spread the word about this new site!

PS: Blogger is awesome. Thanks to Blogger for being SO malleable and giving complete control over the html and css: highly recommend for newbies such as myself. And thanks to Karthik for helping with a couple of key issues and tackling this obstinate monster called Internet Explorer.