NYC

Of the many things that i admire in New York City three stand out. NYC Subway, American Museum of Natural History and Central Park.

Jagjit Singh

More than two decades ago, even before i understood what a ghazal was, i was attracted to the voice of Jagjit Singh singing the title song of Neem Ka Ped, a serial on Doordharshan. I have always liked songs that have touched me emotionally and even though i didn't understand a word of it, i felt very close to the song. Later as my life took me to the north of Vindyas i learnt more about Jagjit and other ghazal singers and ghazals.

This morning when I saw the news that Jagjit singh passed away, it felt very sad. I have listened to songs from Saath Saath and Arth (they were in the same cassette) many times over during the time when i was at IIT Kanpur.

Candid Conversation

The following is a conversation Amrapali heard today at the post office.

Woman: What Candy is that?

Man: The last one.

Woman: I would rather let you have it than me.

Man: Me too.

Sivaji on BIG screen

I chanced upon this article on The Hindu where the author had the following description of Sivaji

"But, it's something else to behold this actor on the big screen. In the living room, his out-sized emoting shrunk to the size of the television monitor, he can often appear ridiculous to the modern eye. To see him up there is to see a lion freed from the confines of a cage and in its natural habitat. It's where he belongs. The big screen so easily accommodates his big acting."

I couldn't agree more.

Ilaiyaraja #3: Productivity chart

Raja used to score music for lot of movies at the same and still could give lot of great songs. In these days when a single song gives a music director a few years of film music career, raja would multiple hits from many movies released about the same time. I am not saying all the songs would be good, but at least 50% of them in each movie would be really good.

As he started becoming more and more popular starting from 1976, the year Annakkili was released he started scoring more and more movies each year. I wanted to plot this in a chart and that is what you see below.

The last year he had one of his multi film hits around same time was in 1993. This is when all the so called big banner directors deserted him. By this time he had already scored music to ~ 600 films. The right hand side scale shows the cumulative # of movies, which hits a plateau around the same time. In my opinion there is a distinct sound that appears in his songs for a given period of time, which is approximately 2-3 years, after which you will see a paradigm change in the way he scores the music. More about this later with examples.

I recently discovered some great blogs that analyze Raja's music thread bare. You can see them on the side bar amongst the blogs I follow.