Ramblings

I was watching an Interview of A.R.Rahman yesterday (I got this bad habit of reading or watching while eating). Like all those who were born after 1972*, I am an die-hard fan of his music. I complained in one of my earlier blogs (I consider it as the most incoherently organized blog I have ever seen) that he isn't focusing on Indian music. I even went to the point of saying that he doesn't fit into the western musicals and he should get back to his roots. I still believe that his western compositions have been inspired heavily by his Indian tunes and I rarely find it amusing to listen to something which has already been done beautifully. But I got a chance to know why he wasn't composing as much as we like. He said to the host of the show " I get the same kind of situations to make songs. Everyone wants pathos, romantic duet, opening song and one kuthu** song and it becomes monotonous for me. I have to make sure that I like the song 100% so that at least 10% of it would be likable for the listeners" I realized how true it was. I listen to cine songs only and as he said they all have same kind of situations. With no control over the visuals, and some time not even sure of whether the song would be shown on screen, it would be very tough for any music composer to keep churning out one after the other. What could an alternate? I am thinking of listening to private albums (which haven't got any base in South India). It is not that I never listened to them before. I listen to TSJ studios @ http://blog.tsjstudio.com/ (yup the same ones whose song "ragasiyam" was mistaken to be in the film Vaaranam Ayiram) and I listen to http://vanithaudios.blogspot.com/. Both of them are known to me but if you listen to TSJ studios you wouldn't mind that. My favorite female singers usually are typical carnatic singers who also sings cine songs. "Bombay" Jeyashree and Sudha Raghunathan are my favorites. I like the voice (I call it as a basal voice) of the singer in http://vanithaudios.blogspot.com/ and It looks like she has exposure to Carnatic music as well so I listen to that as well.

I read the following quote allegedly told by Einstein (can one of you say whether it is authentic?) but I liked it a lot. "If the truths don't substantiate theories, change the truth" (I loosely translated it from Tamil)

*- 1972 is not the absolute year. I assume those people would be 20 years or younger when "Roja" was released.
**- Kuthu is a kind of feel good song of the physically working class people (This is entirely my definition and I didn't mean to offend any one)