RIP Mellisai mannar MSV

Munk,as KH says in Ambu C'est tres impressionnant

Also noted that IR did cover mostly MSV-TKR songs.  Hmmm...

it just so happened given Raaja was tagging lot of his personal sidestory(from his pregnable days) to most of the songs performed
and even by IST estimates concert started pretty late so many MSV only songs couldn't make the cut.
on a tangential note skimming through Brangar's MSV tribute,,why does TKR get so much praise from a particular clique given the sample size of TKR solo works, must greatly annoy MSV fans. 
another interesting tidbit was Raaja had to wait 5 long years to get MSV praise for 'Poongathave'

Wizzy wrote:Munk,as KH says in Ambu C'est tres impressionnant

Also noted that IR did cover mostly MSV-TKR songs.  Hmmm...

it just so happened given Raaja was tagging lot of his personal sidestory(from his pregnable days) to most of the songs performed
and even by IST estimates concert started pretty late so many MSV only songs couldn't make the cut.
on a tangential note skimming through Brangar's MSV tribute,,why does TKR get so much praise from a particular clique given the sample size of TKR solo works, must greatly annoy MSV fans. 
another interesting tidbit was Raaja had to wait 5 long years to get MSV praise for 'Poongathave'

For the same reason that 80s IR songs get mentioned a lot more often than the rest of his vast body of work; they are the classics.  Hardcore fans of either composer may keep tilting at windmills all day to no avail; history cannot be rewritten.  I do not remember any post in the entire BRangan which praised TKR too much...except that either some (like myself) indicated a preference for the songs of the partnership-era or some thought they were posting MSV songs and ended up posting MSV-TKR.  It has nothing to do with which period was better; better is a very subjective point anyway in music.  The combine phase went down as classic; MSV solo probably not to the same extent.  I have older gen relatives who are diehard MSV fans and will even go to the extent of berating IR and most of the time they listen to the MSV-TKR songs.

Munk, comment in this link,
http://tamil.filmibeat.com/cinemaakkaran-saalai/muthuramalingan-cinemakkaran-saalai-035934.html

he says செந்தமிழ் நாட்டு சோலையிலே is the song with Mozart connection, fyi... (my little mozart listening didnt help to find any link..)

Sakalakala Vallavar wrote:Munk, comment in this link,
http://tamil.filmibeat.com/cinemaakkaran-saalai/muthuramalingan-cinemakkaran-saalai-035934.html

he says செந்தமிழ் நாட்டு சோலையிலே is the song with Mozart connection, fyi... (my little mozart listening didnt help to find any link..)

Thanks. Edited.

Glad to read the write-up(very enjoyably written),  the choice of IR's songs and his descriptions. Cant wait to see the video. After this tribute even the hardcorest of MSV fans ought to have doffed their hat to IR in appreciation.
More than a dada saheb phalke or Padmasri or anything else I am glad MSV and his music finally received one of the best awards possible-that of a peer musician's(and a great one at that) unabashed appraisal. idhukku mela enna veNum? His soul is truly resting in peace..or maybe, as always, jiving with Kannadaasan.

For the same reason that 80s IR songs get mentioned a lot more often than the rest of his vast body of work; they are the classics.  

 
It has nothing to do with which period was better; better is a very subjective point anyway in music.  The combine phase went down as classic; MSV solo probably not to the same extent.I have older gen relatives who are diehard MSV fans and will even go to the extent of berating IR and most of the time they listen to the MSV-TKR songs.

its given nostalgia can cloud one's judgement but yam hinting at other set of peeps who firmly believe 
that after their split MSV didn't sound the same insinuating that it was TKR who was
behind those meaty compositions which is being very mean/ great disservice to MSV given TKR's sample size of solos,
why don't they extend the benefit of creative artists evolving over time to MSV. 

To draw a parallel how will you react if 80s nostalgic Raaja fan pinned it on Viji/VSN for the classics(have come across quite a few during orkut days)
and derided 90s and 00s, imo these specimens are basically indolent and their clouded opinions should be avoided like plague.

also to keep things in perspective MSV solos coincided with
waning stars/writers and the stagnant industry which took its worst turn in late 60 and good part of 70s and peeps were looking towards north of vindhyas for their daily fix of music/movies until Raaja stepped in with new breed of writers/actors/directors.

Wizzy wrote:

For the same reason that 80s IR songs get mentioned a lot more often than the rest of his vast body of work; they are the classics.  

 
It has nothing to do with which period was better; better is a very subjective point anyway in music.  The combine phase went down as classic; MSV solo probably not to the same extent.I have older gen relatives who are diehard MSV fans and will even go to the extent of berating IR and most of the time they listen to the MSV-TKR songs.

its given nostalgia can cloud one's judgement but yam hinting at other set of peeps who firmly believe 
that after their split MSV didn't sound the same insinuating that it was TKR who was
behind those meaty compositions which is being very mean/ great disservice to MSV given TKR's sample size of solos,
why don't they extend the benefit of creative artists evolving over time to MSV. 

To draw a parallel how will you react if 80s nostalgic Raaja fan pinned it on Viji/VSN for the classics(have come across quite a few during orkut days)
and derided 90s and 00s, imo these specimens are basically indolent and their clouded opinions should be avoided like plague.

also to keep things in perspective MSV solos coincided with
waning stars/writers and the stagnant industry which took its worst turn in late 60 and good part of 70s and peeps were looking towards north of vindhyas for their daily fix of music/movies until Raaja stepped in with new breed of writers/actors/directors.

Wizzy 

I have some observations of the MSV 70s. He was running out of steam and he could not handle the broad influence of RD. In my view , 70s was an RD decade. The rise of RD and his modern/classical music upset quite a few MDs careers and MSV was one of them. NaaLai Namadhe was a disaster compared to Yaadon ki baarat. While a number of folks have forwarded a theory that Raja with his rustic music was able to arrest the rising patronage for HFM in the South. While there is some truth in that argument, my view is that there is more to it.

You must hear the song Aati Rahenge Bahare from Kasme Vaade by RD - a huge hit. When the film is remade in Tamil as Dharmathin thalaivan Raja comes out with Thenmadurai Vaigai Nadhi. Raja hits it out of the park with no RD influence. That's genius. He stemmed the HFM wave by sheer talent - not some rustic gimmick.

Wizzy wrote:

For the same reason that 80s IR songs get mentioned a lot more often than the rest of his vast body of work; they are the classics.  

 
It has nothing to do with which period was better; better is a very subjective point anyway in music.  The combine phase went down as classic; MSV solo probably not to the same extent.I have older gen relatives who are diehard MSV fans and will even go to the extent of berating IR and most of the time they listen to the MSV-TKR songs.

its given nostalgia can cloud one's judgement but yam hinting at other set of peeps who firmly believe 
that after their split MSV didn't sound the same insinuating that it was TKR who was
behind those meaty compositions which is being very mean/ great disservice to MSV given TKR's sample size of solos,
why don't they extend the benefit of creative artists evolving over time to MSV. 

To draw a parallel how will you react if 80s nostalgic Raaja fan pinned it on Viji/VSN for the classics(have come across quite a few during orkut days)
and derided 90s and 00s, imo these specimens are basically indolent and their clouded opinions should be avoided like plague.

also to keep things in perspective MSV solos coincided with
waning stars/writers and the stagnant industry which took its worst turn in late 60 and good part of 70s and peeps were looking towards north of vindhyas for their daily fix of music/movies until Raaja stepped in with new breed of writers/actors/directors.

I wouldn't go anywhere near as far as that but I do believe that a split dents the work of both partners.  There are very few exceptions to this.  Shankar used to brag about what all he could do to the sympathetic Raju Bharatan but once Jaikishan passed away, Shankar's music lost its lustre.  So there was something the other partner brought to the table which ENHANCED the dominant one's music.  It's not just Shankar Jaikishan, it holds good even for more mediocre examples like Jatin-Lalit who had a hit OST as late as Fanaa in 2006 but once they split, neither partner fared well.  So I am somewhere in between those who claim TKR was a partner only in name and those who claim TKR was the real McCoy and MSV hogged all his credit.  The latter is blatantly false because in that case MSV could not have carried on for so long after the partnership broke up.  The former seems to have been bought unfortunately even by B Rangan and I don't go along with it.  The fact that TKR's solo career was far less successful than MSV's does not necessarily imply that he had no contribution to the partnership.  MSV's weakness was orchestration which came out starkly once IR arrived on the scene.  He wasn't weak only relative to IR but even to his Hindi peers.  Ravi's comparison of Yaadon Ki Baarat and Naalai Namadhe is a case in point.  Perhaps TKR added some input to the orchestration being a violinist because there are moments of brilliance in some of the combined phase songs, esp Ninaipadhellam which thereafter fade away at least imo.  Yes, I agree that the quality of films went down in the 70s which was a point I myself made in the BRangan thread.  Then again, every great Hindi MD worked on their fair share of terrible projects and still delivered gems so it means MSV was probably both a bit handicapped without his partner's contribution and also fatigued/bored by the kind of projects he had to work on (what Raja faced in the early-mid 90s).

ravinat wrote:

You must hear the song Aati Rahenge Bahare from Kasme Vaade by RD - a huge hit. When the film is remade in Tamil as Dharmathin thalaivan Raja comes out with Thenmadurai Vaigai Nadhi. Raja hits it out of the park with no RD influence. That's genius. He stemmed the HFM wave by sheer talent - not some rustic gimmick.

Yup, already agreed with this in my earlier comment.  Aati Rahenge-Thenmadurai is an interesting comparison.  Standalone the latter beats the daylights out of the former, one of his brilliant Raja-baroque creations.  The mood of Aati Rahenge is imo more apt for the situation; I have myself been asked to sing it many times for office birthday celebrations.  It may be that during the remake, the director wanted a more annan-thambi sentiment paatu and tweaked the mood which Raja had to go along with.  Again, the vocals - Thenmadurai easily beats Aati Rahenge....kandraavi singing by Kishore (sorry) and his son.  Only Asha sings well in the Hindi track. SPB is ace in Thenmadurai.

Drunkenmunk wrote:Something I scribbled from yesterday's concert I attended:

https://raajasongadaykeepsboredomaway.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/142-avarullil-msv/

Drunkenmunk, thank you. It was very interesting to read your beautifully written concert review.

Here is the 4th part of the MSV series. I talk about the best year of Vishwanathan Ramamurthy, 1964 which had some stupendous hits like Kadalikka Neramillai and Karnan.

http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/07/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part4-1964.html

In the next part I will be talking about their split and how it affected MSV's music. So I refrain from saying anything here as of now ))

Great post, Suresh.  Completely agree about the Nilavila Vaanam phrase in Unnai Ondru song.  Lovely!  Probably my favourite PS song.

Excellent article Sureshji!

Yes, unnai onRu is my all-time-fav

(pArtha gnAbagam illaiyo used to be a fav too but the day I learnt it was a 'kalaichchelvam' / melody borrowed from some western song, it did lose some of the attraction  )

Raaga_Suresh wrote:Here is the 4th part of the MSV series. I talk about the best year of Vishwanathan Ramamurthy, 1964 which had some stupendous hits like Kadalikka Neramillai and Karnan.

http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/07/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part4-1964.html

In the next part I will be talking about their split and how it affected MSV's music. So I refrain from saying anything here as of now ))

Suresh, loving your series. I am a Susheela fan and kangaL engE is an amazing song to me !!! Grandeur, sweetness and emotion in the first part of the line and intricacy and nuance in the second part ..Composition .. composition (imagine in KH's way of saying it :-) )

Thanks everyone for your kind words.

Here is the fifth part of the series: http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/08/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part-5-split.html

Drunkenmunk wrote:Something I wrote today, this wrt how Raaja extended and enriched MSV's legacy in his own way bearing his genius: https://raajasongadaykeepsboredomaway.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/141-legacy/

DM,
ipo dhan pakkaren. Thanks a lot. padikaren........

Suresh,
5 part ezhudhiteengala.. padikaren..........

MSV Part 6: Wherein I try to guess what was Ramamurthy's contribution to Vishwanathan Ramamurthy:

http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/08/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part-6-some.html

Raaga_Suresh wrote:MSV Part 6: Wherein I try to guess what was Ramamurthy's contribution to Vishwanathan Ramamurthy:

http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/08/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part-6-some.html

Brilliant post, Sureshji!

I'm sure what you've theorized was the actual happening with V-R compositions 

It would be quite interesting to do a similar analysis on OST of V-R films v/s MSV later ones ("re-recording")

Thanks App.

As I told on twitter sitting through 1960 sentiment is impossible for me. I have not even watched Raja movie's for BGM. So listening to any 1960 BGM is out of question for me

As Arul Selvan mentioned on twitter, in quite a few cases musicians other than the MDs were involved in creating the BGM. So analysing BGM's may probably not throw up anything significant.

Well articulated Suresh.  I am waiting to read your take on MSV-solo (I presume there will be one to take up his 70s work?).  But I agree that he is basically an exuberant person and Ramamurthy's influence possibly contained him.  This may have adversely affected the happy tracks to some extent but imo had a very positive influence on the sad songs.  There is a Hindi word often used to describe the emotions of a given piece of music: "tehraav".  The combine produced songs with that quality, which is very rare in basically any genre of music.   Later on, as you said, the orchestration sort of loses structure.  I found this quality distracting in great tunes like Vaa Nila Vaa Nila.  I can barely make it past the first charanam because there's an annoying meandering quality to the structure of the song.  IR mastered experimentation within a tight sense of structure and logic.  The V-R songs may have been a bit staid from the point of view of experimentation but since their focus was crystal clear, they have a lot of emotional depth which I feel sometimes gets lost in the rambling nature of MSV's solo tracks.

The latest issue of cinema express(Tamil) is completely dedicated to MSV with all tributes from all corners. I could just glance through at a shop . Read only IR's tribute which was short and same as what we had heard before. But there were some other big tributes. If anyone happened to go through this fully please share any interesting anecdotes or nuggets here.

MSV Part 7: Wherein I discuss the legacy of Vishwanathan Ramamurthy 

http://sureshs65music.blogspot.in/2015/08/msv-his-music-and-his-times-part-7.html 


I also briefly touch upon the Hindi film music scene of those days.

Well articulated again.  It is an interesting point that in the 60s, the VR sound became the de facto Tamil music sound.  This happened again in the 80s when IR became no.1.  When ARR succeeded with Roja-Gentleman etc, Deva also switched to trying to ape his sound.  One does not see this in Hindi, as you have pointed out in the end.  In the 60s SJ were no.1 (probably, I am not even sure and there may have been years in the middle when say O P Nayyar surpassed them) but that didn't force the other composers to imitate them.  Naushad, Roshan, MM, S D Burman, OP, Salil, Ravi had all carved out their own niche, with LP becoming a force to reckon with by the mid 60s.  Even less heralded composers like Jaidev, Chitragupt or Sonik-Omi had great songs.  Maybe this has to do with the size of the Hindi market vis a vis the Tamil market.  The latter being much smaller, producers may be more risk averse and prefer to work with the no.1 composer (or force the other composers to give him something that approximates the style of the no.1).  In Hindi, there was room for everyone. 

I would only disagree on the point of Aadmi vis a vis Alaya Mani.  They are different soundtracks; I would not say Aadmi didn't rise up to the level of Alaya Mani.  They are both very consistent soundtracks and both cater to the divergent tastes of their respective markets.  To my Hindi-influenced sensibilites, Satti Suthadadha sounds overwrought and heavygoing compared to the majestic, mystical Aaj Purani Raahon Se.  PS def beats the Lata solos, that's for sure.  Even going beyond personal tastes, both Aadmi and Dil Ek Mandir are regarded as landmark soundtracks in their own right.  Only Saathi went under the radar.  Wouldn't say it was Naushad's fault.  He experimented boldly on that album, esp the title track, and the music listening public didn't quite take to it.  Now several years after the fact, Husn E Jaana gets regularly played on retro radio as does the Mukesh-Lata duet.

Aside from all that, the write up really excels in nailing down MSV-TKR's immeasurable influence on TFM.  It's impossible to imagine TFM without them.  Even though I am a diehard IR fan, I wouldn't dare say anything to undermine the impact that MSV-TKR had on TFM.  They established TFM's break from classical/rustic traditions (as Ramachandra and SJ did in the 50s in Hindi) and without them, there could have been no IR, no ARR.