the colour of rain

A piano and a voice. Together they weave a world of gushing passion, religious love, ethereal feminine beauty, intense devotion, a plea for deliverance, with a climatic understanding of the soul’s permanence and the body’s ephemerality. Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan collaborate yet again to produce complexity in the barebones combination of a grand piano and carnatic vocals. Maaya is the colour of the rain. Maaya is illusion. Maaya is a prism through which the colours of light get shaped in such a way that the old growth appears greener, and old colours find themselves formed into a rainbow, as the album cover states. The music becomes metaphor for the illusion of romance, or rain. The rain is gentle. It is the wellspring of all things new, refreshing and resurgent. The rain is fury. It prances with abandon, uprooting the old and challenging every form that comes its way. It is Shakthi, virile and potent, changing the course of several destinies as it unleashes its might.

The songs are sheer poetry. From Ponnin Oli of Kamba Ramayanam, where the grass underneath young Sita’s feet speak of her radiance and beauty, to a tryst between a young maiden and her divine lover, set in a garden inhabited  by nightingales, in Punguyil by Kalki Krishnamurthy, the bewitching words carry us to various emotional spaces, while the music remains free from over-dramatization of sounds. Here’s a transliteration (much of the complexity is lost in translation. from here) of Subramaniya Bharathi’s Suttum Vizhi Chudar sung to his permanent muse, Kannama.

Thy glowing eyes – Kannamma
Are they the sun and the moon?
Thy black eyeballs – Kannamma
Is that the dark hue of the sky?
Glittering diamonds-In
thy dark blue silk sari
Are shining stars – seen
in the middle of the night.

Garden flower’s brightness – Is that
thy alluring smile?
Waves of the blue ocean – Are
thy bosom’s thoughts.
Enchanting melody of the cuckoo- Is
thy sweet voice.
Innocent girl are you – Kannamma
I am in love with thee.

You talk of tradition – Kannamma
Who needs that?
For those in a hurry – Kannamma
Is tradition a hurdle?
If elders accept – our wedding
Shall happen later.
Can I wait till then – here
Let me kiss you on the cheek.

Maaya is the colour of the rain. Every song is clear and serene. Maaya is the colour of the rain. It reflects who we are. Maaya is an illusion. It is what we want it to be.

Pungiyil* from the album Maaya by Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan Buy from Charsur More Anil Srinivasan on his website. Annapoorne and Annamacharya Keerthana Kseerabdhi Kanyakaku Neerajanam with Subiksha Rangarajan are recommended.

~posted by nithya [* best enjoyed with filter coffee]

delicium/delirium: dengue fever

You have been here: the beach-side, in the evening? The lights and music at the edge of humanity. Mediocre music heard filtering out of distant doors, the words garbled. Contemplating a long night, to come or perhaps already passed. Attention at the edge of engagement. Confusion: should you go in or not?

You have surely wanted to be here: a foreign land, the beach-side, in the night? A grimy place, humid.. warm.. comfortable.. cheap. Bad beer, perhaps, but plentiful. The lyric of sex hovering around you all evening. The poorly tuned band, and the woman singing in a strange tongue, too fast for you to follow the sounds, but too slow to be exciting. Confusion: should you tune her out or not? Nothing else to do, but no energy to do anything else, either.

This is the delirium of Dengue Fever. The dreamland of Cambodia, captured in the white man’s gaze in City of Ghosts, and brought to life by the wonderfully anachronistic music of Ethan & Zac Holtzmann and Chhom Nimol. Like Arcade Fire, but twisted in the direction of some rather obscure (to Western ears) pop music, from 60′s Cambodia – how did they even discover this stuff in LA? – Dengue Fever is equal parts throwback and re-invention. It’s definitely an unusual sound to create: the screechy guitars reminiscent of bad tapes & tape players, a harsh, flattened bass (courtesy of tinny amplifiers) and Nimol’s high-pitched vocals all conspire to produce a slightly sad, jangling effect (despite the irony of doing all this on modern sound systems).

The mood is one of loss, kitschy love, lust, and plain heat, but in a nice South-East Asian sort of way (with song titles like Ethanopium, Flowers, I’m Sixteen, Monsoon of Perfume, 22 Nights, We Were Gonna). In one of their rare English-language songs Tiger Phone Card, they declaim:

“You live in Phnom Penh (Zac)
You live in New York City (Chhom)
But I think about you so so so so (together)
So much I forget to eat

If you’re a guy with an Asian chick fetish, grab your feni and listen up.

Hold My Hips from the album Dengue Fever by Dengue Fever Buy from Emusic or Amazon More Dengue Fever at Last.fm

~posted by arvind

weep of the oboe

Tonight,
when the Mariamman flame flickers,
from the aging aalamaram’s sigh,
Bring me your unspoken promises,
Maragadham.
For we shall dance like the bell
and its tether,
to the tune of wind whistles.

And if the temple flame eventually dies,
Maragatham,
our passions will ignite crimson
the rim of the sky.

Tonight,
when I place the
kumkumam on your forehead,
black-red will infuse
into my cold, grey ashes,
that have settled
over five rocks beside a stream
divided by Shiva’s tresses.

[Mariamman = Goddess associated with Durga
Aalamaram = Banyan tree
Maragadham = Emerald. Also a female Tamil name.
Kumkumam = Vermilion]

They Took My Love Away from the album Moon Shines At Night by Djivan Gasparyan Armenian Duduk Buy from cduniverse or Amazon More Djivan Gasparyan at Last.fm

~posted by nithya (all text)