breeze belies the summer heat
makes me jive, sway and swing
but this spring in my feet?
no, it must be spring!




(It could also be Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Piano Sonata (No. 15), that I started my day with. It simply refuses to stop looping in my head. Beethoven often does this to me.)

That tiny yellow leaf
Among the abundant green
Is autumn, the early thief
Already sneaking upon the scene!

By  Ink Spill, at 8.3.05  

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:-)

That tiny yellow leaf of yours
Simply soaked up too much sun
Now it looks for pallor's cures
While rowdy lot of green pokes fun

By  Deepak, at 8.3.05  

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Bombay is arguably Rahman's best work till date for a movie in any language. Your thoughts?

By  Anonymous, at 11.3.05  

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Hi Avis! :-), let me rephrase what you said with a slight emendation:

"Bombay is agruably one of Rahman's best work till date...."

Music is a lot about personal taste - one man's hip-hop is other man's noise ;-). So I'll just say that while I love Bombay, my personal favorites are Kandukonden Kandukonden and Parthale Paravasam.

By  Deepak, at 11.3.05  

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:) Very true... Music is absolutely about personal taste. I like Kandukondain as well though haven't heard Paarthale Paravasam yet. But inspite of his many hit releases like Roja, Rangeela, Sapnay, Dil Se, Saathiya, Lagaan or more recently Swades, my personal favourite remains Bombay. It may purely be because I am inclined to reminisce rather romantically of the period when Bombay was released given my age then. But it may also be because the soundtrack of Bombay had four songs that changed for ever the way I would hence appreciate Hindi film music.

Chitra's mellifluous rendition of Kehna Hi kYa, albeit in Tamil accented Hindi, still gives me goosebumps. The haunting qawwali break away and the Tabla rolls in between are still stunning in their rawness.

The minimalistic score for Tu Hi Re still quietly recreates the situational storminess of the movie. This also happens to be my favourite Hariharan song. Kavita being Kavita is screechy on the highest notes but I believe Rahman brought about a transformation in her singing capabilities with that song.

The rhythm programming on Humma, supported by Ranjit Barot, is again someting that knocks me off my feet even today. Rahman has this uncanny knack for picking out the right people to sing the right songs for him and he hit jackpot with Remo on Humma.

And finally, the Bombay Theme! Words fail me here. Never before had I heard the flute or strings being used in this manner in Hind films. Rahman's western classical influence is clearly visible here. :) To my mind the Bombay Theme was the starting of synthesized flute tones being used in Hindi film music to express strong emotions. Pathbreaking is one word that comes to mind.

Something very observable about Rahman's music is, unlike other music directors who go through a very noticeable growing-up routine with time, Rahman's music was already completely developed when he first hit the scene (and might I add far ahead of the industry at that point). And that level of maturity in his understanding of music has sustained him till today so much so that the rest of the industry is still playing catch-up.

By  Anonymous, at 12.3.05  

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That's a very thorough analysis Avis! If I am told to pick just one track of all the tracks that Rahaman has composed till date, it will be Bombay Theme!

By  Deepak, at 14.3.05  

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For all of you - the music lovers.
Here is what I found about the origins of musical notes do, Re, Mi .... How did the Indian Saptak come about? I am curious!!!!!!!!!!!- Vijay
batraveekay@hotmail.com

Musical notes
Deepti

The word gamut began life as a medieval musical term with Guido d’ Arezzo, who was a musical theorist of the 11th century. He devised the hexachord which was a six-note scale for sight-reading music. Today’s ‘do re mi fa so la …’ come from the system that he derived from the first syllables of certain words in an ancient Latin hymn:

Ut queant laxis resonare fibris

Mira gestorum famuli tuorum

Solve polluti labii reatum

Sanete I ohannes.

This hymn means ‘absolve the crime of the polluted lip in order that the slaves may be able with relaxed chords to praise with sound your marvellous deeds’. The note below the lowest note (ut) came to be known as the gamma-ut and as time went by, this became gamut or metaphorically, any ‘complete range’. The word music can be traced to the Greek mousike, which is derived from mousa or muse and means ‘of the muses’.

The specialised sense of the word music began in Greek when it came to be used for ‘poetry sung to music’ and, later, for music alone.

Incidentally, in terms of etymology, a museum is a place devoted to the muses coming as it does from the Greek mouseion or ‘place of the muses’. Mosaic also comes from the same source but mouseion in this case became altered to mosaique in French from where English picked it up.

The word carol can be traced to the Greek khoraules, made up of khoros or choir and aulos, or a reed instrument. In classical Latin times, this was the person who accompanied a choir on a flute or reed instrument. Khoraules, earlier used for a dance in a ring accompanied by singing, led on to another version of the word carol, which holds that carol is not a song but a circle of singers.

Comedy also owes its origin to traditions of music. In ancient Greece, a komos was a festival with music and dancing that lasted until after supper and ended with a torchlight parade. Komos or ‘revelry’ was later combined with oidos, meaning singer, to produce komoidos or singer in the revels, creating today’s comedy.

By  Anonymous, at 15.3.05  

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