17. Maestro speaks!

There was Malayalam program in Amrita TV called Hrudaya Ragangalude Raja in 2005. After 8 episodes, the program was stopped for reasons not known. I am posting here two audio clippings from this.

1) Raja talks about how a music should be:

http://www.filefactory.com/?8ddc2e

Gist of the speech: Music is God’s property; we should not misuse it to spoil our mind and body. Avoid using ready-to-use, sequenced music and use your own creativity. Only when a composer makes his own contribution to a song, he can claim it to be his own. Legends like Devarajan, Dakshinamurthi, etc can compose without instruments. Now for everything, we resort to computers. He likens the situation to earlier days when there were no hospitals or medical facilities, people used to be healthy; nowadays with so much of advancements in medicine and technology, we are just living with so many diseases. We should not compose music which will spoil the ether.

2) Unplugged version of Mathu Bhuteshwari from Guru Ramana Geetham:

Guru Ramana Geetham (for samples: http://www.agimusic.com/guru.html) released in 2005 has not been actively discussed even among Raja fans. I didn’t see any discussion on the songs in any forum. It has 10 beautiful songs (9 in Tamil & 1 in Sanskrit) written and orchestrated by Maestro. Lyrics are deeply philosophical and meaningful:

1. Chinna payyan (about incidents in Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi’s life)
2. Ennai kavarndhu (beautiful Desh raga song about His presence in Thiruvannamalai)
3. Indroru naal (short but sweet song about another day passing without doing anything worthwhile)
4. Annamalaiyar (he lists about 20-30 saints who served Bhagavan and the Lord in Thiruvannamalai)
5. Enge sendralum (Maestro’s favourite Mayamalava Gowlai, says Bhagavan is always with him)
6. En ooru Sivapuram (famous and often sung by Raja in programs, he laments about worldly life and how to get back to the Lord)
7. Ippirappil (“I’ve not done anything in this life”)
8. Arunachala (Raja ‘complains’ to Lord about non-attention of Bhagavan on him and wants Bhagavan’s benevolent vision on him)
9. Arul thavazhum (guest-sung by Unnikrishnan, extolling Lord Annamalaiyar’s virtues, raga: Kalyani)

The last song in the album Maathru Bhuteshwari (raga: Saranga Tharangini, seems to be a rare raga) is the highlight. He says Bhagavan has inscribed the words ‘Mathru Bhuteshwari’ on the Linga kept on His mother’s samadhi in Thiruvannamalai. That word inspired him to write this Sanskrit song. He says the thought and words came to him in 5 minutes!!!

http://www.filefactory.com/?fa27c3

In the album, it’s sung by Bombay Jayashree but hear it in Master’s own voice here. He sings this song to the Malayalam singer (and interviewer) MG Sreekumar and teaches him also. As MGS says, the song contains majestically beautiful and musically tough gamakas / phrases to sing.

It’s a treat watching this in video - Raja playing his harmonium and singing and his troupe playing the instruments.

Note: Please correct me if there are any translation errors in the above.