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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

2 Oct 20

Another small thread on SPB songs mostly from the 70s. But all under music directors other than MSV and Ilaiyaraaja, just to showcase the point SPB's voice was found most versatile by all music directors.

We start with the obvious, and one of Tamil cinema's all-time classic, Nanda En Nila from the eponymous film. Legendary Dakshinamoorthy's masterpiece. You may classify it as Dharmavathi or Madhuvanthi. Heck, either way, it's too good.

This is a song that was originally made famous by SG Kittappa. When music director SV Venkatraman reprised the same 'Kami Sathyabama' in Sri Krishna Leela, SPB showed his classical ability in no small measure.

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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

29 Sep 20

A small thread on SPB songs under the baton of music director V Kumar.

It is well known that SPB primarily shaped himself under the remarkable MSV & became a legend while singing for the peerless Raaja. But the beauty of SPB voice is that all music directors had to almost willy-nilly use him. And he had sung memorable songs under almost all of them.

His partnership with V Kumar, for me, is fascinating, and some of their songs together in the 70s can belong to the hall-of-famer category. It is just that Kumar's songs --- this was a lifelong blight for him --- tended go under the radar for inexplicable reasons.

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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

14 Sep 20

The issue of their discussion of irrelevant here.
But the specific use of the word 'mami' is decidedly casteist here. But in the skewed politics of TN the one is who is referred to as mami will be branded as casteist.

And also those folks, who wear their wokeness on their sleeves should remember, the Dravidian types will eventually come for you and your caste. No matter what! Exhibit B:

And those self-anointed wokes, whose holier-than-thou act is always grating, are no different. But their cabal will always look the other way. This man, if he were on the other camp, would have been called "vile", "scumbag" by the commissars of woke culture.

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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

24 Jul 20

A brilliant song in the film Athma. I had long wondered why Ilaiyaraaja had TN Seshagopalan sing this, and not, say, KJ Yesudas, who was the go-to singer for such type of numbers at that time.
The song, of course, is set to the rare ragam Gowda Malhar.

This ragam is widely credited to have been conceived by Harikesanallur Muthiah Bhagavathar. He well and truly belongs to the pantheon of greats in Carnatic music.
And his well known disciple was Ramanathapuram Sankara Sivam, who in turn was the guru of, well, TN Seshagopalan.

TNS is generally seen to uphold the Harikesanallur tradition.
So, the whole song was Ilaiyaraaja's way of paying a tacit & beautiful tribute to a legitimate legend of Carnatic by getting his disciple TNS sing a song in a ragam conceived by him (Bhagavathar).
This is so touching!

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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

18 Jul 20

It's on a day like this you get upset with the Indian media.
Mathematician C S Seshadri passed away last night. The most casually used word 'genius' deserves to sit alongside his name. He well and truly belongs to the Indian mathematical lineage of Ramanujan.

As his primary subject was algebraic geometry --- one that is beyond the ken of us ordinary people --- his greatness cannot be truly understood by many of us.

But, among others, he is a "Fellow of Royal Society", has a theorem named after him (jointly, the Narasimhan-Seshadri Theorem), & there is a 'Seshadri Constant', too. Even without knowing much maths, you can easily deduce that he must have been a towering figure in his field.

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K Balakumar

@kbalakumar

9 Jul 20

K Balachander's 90th birth anniversary today is a good occasion to talk a bit about why his cinematic association with Kamal Haasan is special and interesting. A thread based on just 3 small scenes from their last movie together.

My own formative years were in the late 70s and the 80s --- the period that the duo's partnership mostly covered. And they had an important hand in shaping the cinematic sensibilities of many like me in these parts in that era.

It's well-known that KB and Kamal made 36 films together, their last formal outing as director-actor was Unnal Mudiyum Thambi in 1988 --- the time when KB was more less at the end of his top creative phase, while Kamal was just taking off on his own amazing inventive run.

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