Dear folks!
I wish you a great 2012.
This is the season of Carnatic music. There are more than a thousand concerts that happened in Chennai in the last few weeks alone. The Hindu has a wonderful coverage of all the happenings and thoughts on CM. I am enjoying these things without actually being in Chennai...thanks to digital access.
I am giving you three musical links. Each features the same main artiste, Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. The mridangam is played by the maestro Palghat Mani Iyer, but the versions differ, renderings separated by decades perhaps. The song is the swarajati masterpiece of syAmA sAstri. He is my favourite composer. This song is very difficult to sing, as it plumbs the depths of the scale and challenges the singer to bring out the beauties of Bhairavi, a typical heavy raga of Carnatic music. The composition seems to have been created for great rhythmic accompaniment. We have here the GREATEST mridangam player thus far in history, playing in very creative ways to embellish the song. (Rightclick and open the Soundcloud track in a new window).
Link- best audio
Link-average audio
Link- poor audio
Those gifted with an ear for Carnatic music would not tire of listening to these items any number of times. After all, I cannot think of anything greater than music to occupy time!
