Hello !

Why I reminded of this dormant blog suddenly today and came back to hit it? Lot of reasons beyond a few hurting personal things.

The Pandemic in the last 10 months has invoked many people's passion which they were holding it for reasons known to them. There were many started facing the camera, of course not the Cinematic one, but in YT to showcase their interesting side. I could fine many such interesting POVs in those.

One of my close friend, @ipammal (rsgiri) had started a interesting topic which evoked my interest. And after few interactions offline I was online with him and we started discussing various musical aspects of TFM. His show is based on reminiscing one's life and not compare or classify any music or MD. The best thing happened on this was to interact with another two best friends more than friends well read kind of SMEs in my area of interest Shri Mohanakrishnan Sir and Sri G Ragavan. We were connected on the micro-blogging site for quite some time with  music being the main life line but those virutal sessions discussing with them and to hear their POVs, experiences were real treat.

Still why I came back to revive this blog?  Basically am too lazy to sit and write. Could have seen from my earlier stints here. Micro-blogging came as a boon to me to convey anything short and many a times the sacrasm getting better of me to convey it crypticly :-). There is always a change keep happening intutively for reasons sometimes  not known us :-). Also there is quite lot of time at my disposal now to keep  more occupied than my earlier stint here.

Another spark on this came today morning while I tweeted to another best friend @Veeba in Twitter about TFM between 1970 to 1975, the general notion being those were the time HFM was dominating Tamil Film World. But personally which is a myth and thought of clarifying it. This needs slightly eloborate and colloborative approach hence I thought this is the best medium than doing a thread on Twitter. 

Trying to revive this with '1970 to 1975' TFM to start with and this is a colloborative participative one especially with the best connoisseurs of TFM, GRagavan and Veeba.

Eyy (Ilaya) Raja

I tried writing this piece for quite sometime.

Male duets are really rare in TFM. The moment one think about male duets, immediately the epic "Pon ondru Kanden" of TMS,PS comes to everyone's mind irrespective of the timelines.  This song is ruling even today after many decades speak volume of its impact it has on the TFM lovers. Another classic one being "Paadinaal oru Paattu" from yester year. When I sat down to think post 70s/80s I couldn't find better than this one "Eye Raaja ondranom Indru" from the Jallikattu. Yes I am biased and I agree since I didn't think beyond anyone other than Raja while taking up this.

Coming to this song, let me try to give my few cents on how to look into compositions of Raja. IMHO, he never tried to compose any single track in isolation. He tried to get into this skin of the story line however thin or effective the story, screen play, characters and he always come up with mind blowing compositions not to forget about the BGMs, preludes and interludes. While saying this one must look into BGMs itself in isolation and can be analyzed.

If you carefully look at his earlier compositions beginning of 70s and 80s he had given us lot of gems which has brilliant preludes.

The song in discussion here is from the film Jallikattu starring Sivaji Ganesan, Sathyaraj, Radha directed by Chitra Lakshmanan.  This story line is very simple of a vengeance with a Sivaji as the leading protagonist.

Lets just peep into the situation for this song. Sivaji, a retired Justice takes into his custody a murder accused to rehabilitate him. The accused, Sathyaraj, didnt like Sivaji from first sight since he has awarded him the highest punishment for no wrong done by him.  Over a period time Sathyaraj understands Sivaji's intentions and understand the motto for both of them is common after initial hiccups. This song comes at the moment when he realizes and pleads to Sivaji for his innocence. And Sivaji says he will lead him to fight for the right. Krishna, helping Arjuna to fight for right. Heavily inspired with the situation, Gitapadesa, this song is pictured and carefully look into the lyrics also brings out that.

Now about the song. Raja was using MV to sing for Sivaji but for this he has chose Balu and Mano for Sathyaraj. There is a interesting twist here also if you look at Mano being shishya of SPB. Is it Raja's intelligence or I am reading too much into this :-).

This song starts with a brilliant prelude. This composition has outstanding orchestration especially these kind of songs are targeted to sing in live performance. Raja has given another such best orchestration targeting a live performance category is the wonderful "Sangeetha Megam" from Udhaya Geetham, and it has the one of the best preludes till date and a popular ring tone of many even today.

Once the anu pallavi lands nicely, the interlude starts with a breezy humming. Look at the situation here, the heroine feels happy about the bonding of the two and her happiness is coming out very well in this humming. Both Balu, who blends so nicely and Mano do real justice to this song.

I do not see any other male duets coming close to this. Again I am biased and let me be :-)

Before I conclude, IMHO, if you want to enjoy each and any composition of Raja I think one should see it not in isolation but wrt to the situation to enjoy it fully.

PS : Too many thoughts in mind once I start writing about IR hence ended up a lengthy one. Atleast post this, couple of you will look deep into his compositions rather than hearing it stand alone.

http://youtu.be/EOTmvsE9IoM