#Swatantryagaan
A music concert of songs from Indian cinema that contributed to the Indian freedom struggle and after.
It was great fun to conceive and curate this concert and work with such a talented team led by Kamlesh Bhadkamkar.
The musicians were some of the finest of our times - Archis Lele, Anil Karanjavkar, Datta Tawde, Hanumant Rawade, Amit Gothivrekar, Varad Kathapurkar, Rahul Deo and Kamlesh himself.
The singers did such a rocking job that
2 and a half hours of only patriotic songs from films from 1936 to 2021 and yet the audience was kept glued to the seats. A small clip from the concert will give you an idea how electrifying the atmosphere was.
Thanks to Milind Ingale, Hamsika Iyer, Hrishikesh Ranade, Dhawal Chandwadkar and Madhura Kumbhar for the spirited performance.
We tried a lot to give an insight into how songs prior to 1947 were disguised and cryptically coded so that the
British censors would not find them objectionable to how patriotic songs surged after the Kargil war so that the concert did not remain only about entertainment but would provide an enriching experience. In this, the inputs and contribution of
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I had a boy working for me who was a converted Christian. He was poor and when he came to me was in search of work. My son was in kg at the time and sometimes when I and my wife were away at work, we used to ask him to get our son home by rickshaw for which we paid him some
additional cash. One day my wife saw that despite taking money for rickshaw he got my son home by bus. She asked him why he didn’t come home in a rickshaw and he said he couldn’t get one. We let it be. One day I got a phone call from a colleague of mine to whom I had sent this
boy to pick up a cheque. My friend said, “Your boy was here and we got talking. He told me about your wife having caught him bringing your son by bus. He confessed to me that this was not the first time he had done this. He said he used to do it often to save up money. That
In the summer of 1993, when I was still a confused young man, undecided on what career to choose, I came across a cassette of songs by #Ilaiyaraja in a small shop in Coimbatore, while on a trip to the south with my parents. I was still far away from considering
music as a career; I was contemplating to be a writer at that time, having won the prize of best playwright twice in INT and Unmesh competitions. But music was a permanent resident in my mind and lips and I hummed constantly.
I had been introduced to Ilaiyaraja’s music
through Balu Mahendra’s #Sadma and since then was absolutely enamoured by his genius. So when I came across this cassette of Ilaiyaraja compositions sung by the great #SPBalasubramaniam, I was more than excited.
Of all the songs in that cassette, ‘Pachamala poovu’,
If you notice, even the construction of her sentence in English is grammatically incorrect. This happens due to apathy towards language and not just apathy towards ‘a’ language. The tendency of ‘this much is enough to get the work done’ as against doing the work aesthetically is
what is at play here. I see the same attitude in Marathi too. What @Nawazuddin_S has said in the viral clip is a problem that I had highlighted in a Marathi thread a few days back. Pt. Satyadev Dube used to say, “If your language is unclear, your thoughts remain ambiguous too.”
In Marathi too, we see the pressure to make the language ‘simpler’ by giving up the rules of ‘shuddhalekhan’ for example. There is also a militant opposition towards standardised language in the name of casteism. On the contrary, I think that is a very dangerous policy to have
#मराठीदिन निमित्त एक मजेशीर गोष्ट. काही वर्षांपूर्वी मुंबईच्या झेवियर्स महाविद्यालयातील काही मुलं मला भेटायला आली.
मला म्हणाली -“सर, झेवियर्स महाविद्यालयात खूप पूर्वीपासून मराठी वाङमय मंडळ आहे परंतु काही कारणाने ते अनेक वर्ष निष्क्रीय होतं.
आमचे सर आहेत - शिंदे सर - त्यांनी या मंडळाला पुनुरुज्जिवित करायचं ठरवलं आहे. या मंडळाच्या उद्घाटनाच्या कार्यक्रमाला प्रमुख पाहुणा म्हणून आपण यावं अशी आमची इच्छा आहे. तुम्ही याल का?”
तरूण मुलांशी संवाद साधायला मी कधीही नकार देत नाही. मी त्वरित होकार दिला.
तसा त्यातला एक मुलगा जरा ओशाळून म्हणाला - “एकच प्रॉब्लेम आहे सर. मंडळ नवीन आहे आणि तुम्हाला झेवियर्सची कल्पना आहे. आमच्याकडे बराचसा श्रोतृवर्ग अमराठी आहे. तर तुम्ही तुमचं भाषण इंग्रजीतून कराल का?” मला याची गंमत वाटली. कुणी म्हणेल हे कसलं मराठी मंडळ! पण मला यात एक संधी दिसली.
Read the thread. Sai Deepak is right. This problem is more with humanities departments who shut themselves to any different opinion in the name of ‘hurtful’ speech. I have seen that it’s mostly the professors who are totally incapable and are, in fact, afraid to entertain a
position that is different from theirs. Notice that it is the demand for cancellation which is more hurtful, almost abusive and insulting to a human being. Sai is being gracious here and has not retreated from having a dialogue with students of any ideological bent. I have
personally experienced this with certain institutions. I feel sorry for the students who, in their formative years, decline to face difficult challenges to their thinking and are encouraged by their elders to hunt in packs. The elders return to their cosy staff rooms and the
I don’t think this is a problem with just individuals. Urban life and lifestyle has been a major culprit in this. We have been able to increase our standard of living but not the standard of life. Let me compare this to a phenomenon that I observed in Indian film music. -1
Till early 80s composers and arrangers worked mostly with acoustic instruments. Emphasis was on the ‘composition’ and not on the ‘sound’. ‘Sound’ was an ornament not the soul of the song. With the advent of the synthesiser, things started changing. -2
Here was an instrument that cloned many instruments and offered a million ‘sounds’. Suddenly, it now became imperative for songs to have a new ‘sound’. This changed something very fundamental in the production of Indian film music. ‘Sound’ became the soul of a song -3