deponti

When I was young, the musical "Sound of Music" captivated my romantic heart, and I soon knew all the songs by heart, even the less known ones:





Lyrics:


(Maria)
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked miserable past
I must have had a moment of truth

For here you are
Standing there
Loving me
Whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth
Or childhood
I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

(Captin)
Here you are standing here
Loving me
Whether or not you should

(Maria)
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

(Together)
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could

(Maria)
So some where in my youth....

(Captain)
or childhood

(Maria)
I must have done something

(together)
Something good



My heart is overjoyed for kadambarid.

One of my great favourites by

Mohammed Rafi

is this wonderful song:





A beautiful woman is really like a work of art...a "joy to behold", as the poet says.

I think that in this video,

Waheeda Rehman

looks extremely beautiful. It's not the beauty of cosmetics..it's the beauty of feature.

But the lovely part is that every woman *looks* beautiful to someone who loves her...lucky, indeed, is the woman who has someone tell her that she's beautiful. When she listens to those words, she does, indeed, feel that she is beautiful..even if realism may step in later!

I wonder, though, what it must be to be truly beautiful by anyone's reckoning (say, like Diana was)...and then have age catch up on you, and see the physical beauty disappear. It would be wonderful if the inner fire were never to go...but there ARE women who are beautiful only on the outside, and indeed, are riddled with complexes as a result of their physical beauty...they constantly harp about it, are insecure with it....how sad that such a gift, instead of being a plus, becomes a minus!

Oh...by the way...the language of this song is actually Urdu, not Hindi; I have to get a proper translation for the words (eg. "kaikashA") that I don't know...give me time, asakiyume!

And inspirethoughts...if you can translate....that would be great!

KM gave me a great gift recently...he recorded several episodes of "Rangoli", a program on

Doordarshan

that is broadcast at 8am to 9am on Sunday mornings...for several years...I forget for how long... it's been a program that I never want to miss. Several anchors, including the very beautiful film star Hema Malini, and the present one, the over-coy and often-grating Jaya Ganguli,have presented a mix of old songs and information about them.

Once upon a time, we had only TWO channels...and we used to watch Rangoli, and the other immensefly popular program,

ChitrahAr

This is still aired on Friday evenings at 7.30pm, but somehow, I don't seem to watch as regularly as I continue to do with Rangoli.

The format has varied a little, and there were times when only the first two songs were good...but over the years, "Rangoli" on Sundays has become a rooted habit; before, during, or after the program, a long chat with itsalouwelylife will also happen, with discussions and giggles cementing the bonds between two sisters-in-law who feel more like sisters...N, you cannot begin to imagine how big a part you play in our lives.

Just now I was watching several songs, and amongst the gems, this one moved me to tears. Once again, I am up against the message , "embedding disabled by request", so just click on this link:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym8lVlXw_lc


Thanks to inspirethoughts's help, (as usual) here's the video:



That contains the translation, too...thank you, A!

The haunting melody is memorable, and the melancholy lyrics speak of the evanescence of time and the opportunities to meet and love...and the incredible sweetness of love in the rain.

So many threads take shape in my mind from this....the beautiful voice of

Lata


...the importance of a sweet voice in music....

the golden era of Indian film music, in both Hindi and Tamizh....that flowering where wonderful music composers, lyricists, music directors and singers all blossomed together to produce incredible music (of course we tend to forget the not-so-good songs!)

When you click on that link, you can click on ANY of the songs that show up....all of them are so lovely to the ear. Such classic hits...

Here's another person's

words about Rangoli

Well, some people might have stopped watching Rangoli..but several times in the past few months, I have made excellent use of technology to watch Rangoli in India from St.Louis...how, you ask?

Well, N and I both turn on Skype...and her camera and speakers bring Rangoli live to St.Louis! It's Saturday evening 9.30pm for us here, and 8am Sunday morning for her....and sometimes KM is there, too,visiting....

Music, poetry and beautiful scenery or photography can melt my heart to a mushy goo....and listening to the songs on Rangoli when far away from home does it every time.

And I think the knowledge of every additional language makes it possible to enjoy the treasures of the music and poetry of that language...I am thankful for a childhood that had me knowing four languages from the earliest time I can remember.

Here

is the list of songs that the Symphony Orchestra played on Art Hill, on the evening of the 17th.


Here's a view of Art Hill, with the Art Museum in the background, and the crowd collected in front of the tent in which the orchestra is playing:




Behind the tent, as the orchestra plays, the paddleboats on Des Peres creek float in like fireflies, attracted to the music:





( a little more of the evening )


I wish I could have done a better job of capturing them in photographs:

While listening to children's songs, I came across this one:




And since it made me laugh a lot..here it is, for you, too!

Thanks a million to anushsh for sending me this wonderful jugalbandi concert...

bAnsuri (large bamboo flute )

and

jaltarang

(I don't know the equivalent in English...click on the link to know more about this very difficult musical instrument which is like a xylophone but played with bowls of water)






Listen to as much as you want or leave it on while you do something else...it's just over an hour long.

The first rAg is AbhOgi, a south Indian rAgA adopted by north Indian musicians, then comes mAlkauns (Karnatic equivalent=hindOLam), and then a small piece in pahAdi, which is not precisely a classical rAgA, but which comes from the mountains (pahAd=mountain), and is unmistakable.

I was listening to his beautiful, sad song from "Dil Ek Mandir":





Is it the harmonium which is used in the song, or is it the accordion? And can someone tell me why the harmonium was banned on All India Radio for a long time?

http://www.z100.com/cc-common/news/sections/special/michaeljackson/


He was such a mixed-up person...but his prodigious talent was undeniable. I hope he has finally found peace...


In his memory, one of my personal favourites:





I remember an old joke where a parent was trying to explain to the child about God. "God...is neither black, nor white, neither male nor female, neither good nor bad...." The child thought a little, and said, "Oh! God is Michael Jackson!"

My brother was a very talented mridangam player, and if he had put his mind to it, he could (I'm not saying it because he was my brother) have become one of the top players in Carnatic music...but he was too easy-going for that.

For many years, apart from the traditional Carnatic concerts, he played for the musical group of Ananda Shankar . He had such immense fun during this time...a college student in those days had very few avenues to be flush with funds...and he was! He would bring extravagant gifts for my daughter, arrive in a taxi...go out with his red paintbrush for nights out on the town....

My sister-in-law sent my daughter a link to one of the songs:






and





Does the music sound dated? Remember, this was about 35 years ago! We were not very happy when the dancers started taking over from the music....but the dancers were talented, too, led by Tanushree Shankar.

When I watched the ceremony in Chennai on the webcam, I did not cry..but the sound of the mridangam in the first piece brought the tears streaming down. I wept for the loss of my brother...all over again, a year later...when I thought I had developed a hard carapace that nothing could breach. Music can melt the barriers one puts up....

I almost never gave a concert unless he accompanied me on the mridangam...even in Muscat, Oman, he accompanied me for my farewell concert. What a fantastic accompanist he was! He completely gave up playing in his later years, and I still feel, what a waste of talent that was...



Excuse me...I am still very weepy. Let me go dry my tears, and put my shell in place again.

We decided to take Eli (who has somehow become Biddles or Biddly) to Forest Park for an outing, and D had the idea of going boating. So that's what we did...how we managed to put her baby carriage in the boat, feed her, change her in the paddleboat (where two people pedal like crazy) is a different story!

But one sight that I loved was this bouquet of birds under one of the bridges that we boated through:





Those are BARN SWALLOWS, how lovely to see the fledglings like that! It was very dark, and so I had to use a flash, but that was the only shot that I took.

Another bridge also has a nest in the beginning stages of construction!


The fountains in the creek made a beautiful scene:





Close up, too, the water was delicately coloured by both the twilight and the light:






St Louis, I must say, is a beautiful city to live in...and the weather has been very kind to us so far, with thunderstorms keeping down both the heat and humidity.Yesterday evening was the first time it felt a little humid...I hope bright sunshine and high heat/humidity keep off this summer!


I really do enjoy not having a maid, and doing everything ourselves....it's so much more convenient! I wish this was possible in India, but with the dust there, it would mean (and it DID mean, in the days I didn't have a maid) that I would spend all my free time dusting, sweeping and swabbing.... lack of dust is a major plus, I must say.

I have started music classes for one of A's friends...let's see how they go, and if the person concerned enjoys them and finds them helpful!

I had been seeing announcements of the concerts on Tuesday evenings at Forest Park , but got to go only yesterday.


Here's the poster in front of the History Museum:




( more about the Tuesday evening )

I would be glad if someone told me what this kind of music is...I enjoyed it, but don't know anything about it, except that it's definitely not jazz, gospel, or the blues, or soul....or country, come to that...I seem to know a lot of what it's NOT!


Next week, it's the Motown Revue, which is one of KM's favourites....and from today, there's The Merry Wives of Windsor by Shakespeare at Forest Park, too....I am, indeed lucky that DnA chose to buy their home close to this lovely urban park!

* It is important to be able to reach the brakes on any piano.
* Just about any animal skin can be stretched over a frame to
make a pleasant sound once the animal is removed.
* It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the
neck and shake him in rhythm.
* My favorite instrument is the bassoon. It is so hard to play,
people hardly ever play it. That is why I like the bassoon best.
* I would like for you to teach me to play the cello. Would
tomorrow or Friday be best?
* The plural form of musical instrument is known as orchestra.
* Tubas are a bit too much.
* A contra-bassoon is like a bassoon, only the opposite.
* The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.
* The flute is a skinny-shape-high-sounded instrument.
* Instrumentalist is a many-purposed word used by many
player-types.
* Anyone who can read all the instrument notes at the same time
gets to be the conductor.
* The main trouble with a French horn is it's too tangled up.
* For some reason, they always put a treble clef in front of every
line of flute music. You just watch.
* The concertmaster of an orchestra is always the person who sits
in the first chair of the first violins. This means that when a
person is elected concertmaster, he has to hurry up and learn
how to play a violin real good.
* Question: Is the saxophone a brass or a woodwind instrument?
Answer: Yes.
* Last month I found out how a clarinet works by taking it apart.
I both found out and got in trouble.
* A bassoon looks like nothing I have ever heard.
* Cymbals are round, metal CLANGS!
* Question: What are kettle drums called?
Answer: Kettle drums.
* When electric currents go through them, guitars start making
sounds. So would anybody.
* The double bass is also called the bass viol, string bass, and
bass fiddle. It has so many names because it is so huge.
* While trombones have tubes, trumpets prefer to wear valves.
* A trumpet is an instrument when it is not an elephant sound.
* Another name for kettle drums is timpani. Or else you can just
stick with the first name and learn it good.
* Instruments come in many sizes, shapes and orchestras.
* You should always say 'chili' when you mean there are two or
more cellos.
* A tuba is much larger than its name.
* A harp is a nude piano.
* My favorite composer is Opus.
* My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.
* Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the
Hatfields and the McCoys.
* Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long
ago.
* Morris dancing is a country survival from times when people
were happy.
* A good orchestra is always ready to play if the conductor steps
on the odium.
* Caruso was at first an Italian. Then someone heard his voice
and said he would go a long way. So that's why he came to
America.
* I know what a sextet is but I'm not allowed to say.
* Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.
* When a singer sings, he stirs up the air and makes it hit any
passing eardrums. But if he is good, he knows how to keep it
from hurting.
* In the last scene of Pagliacci, Canio stabs Nedda who is the one
he really loves. Pretty soon Silvio also gets stabbed, and they all
live happily ever after.
* An opera is a song of bigly size.
* Aaron Copland is one of your most famous contemporary
composers. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most
composers do not live until they are dead.
* Henry Purcell is a well known composer few people have ever
heard of.
* Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so
deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even
when everyone was calling him. I guess he could not hear so
good. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this.
* Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was
rather large.
* John Sebastian Bach died from 1750 to the present.
* A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.
* Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you
better not try to sing.
* Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.

A comment from birdonthewire appreciating my "alphabet verse" set me thinking about the difference between art and artisanship...

Artisanship...is clever,excites sometimes fleeting admiration....can be replicated,is not necessarily creative.

Art...is wise,excites longer-lasting feelings and really moves one... is unique, and is always creative.

But I agree that there are lots of things which straddle the border between these two....

So, I am still wondering...is word-play art? or artisanship? Do I somehow seem as if I think of artisanship (eg, painting a copy of an Old Master) rather less than a work of art? Is it not valuable in its own right? Is a beautifully executed copy of a Holbein less than a daub of original brushstrokes? How should I rate my abcd verse...well, I just said it, it's verse! ...if what distinguishes verse from poetry is the emotion it evokes, does that difference hold true for all art?

I find the music in the "India" ads and even the Airtel signature tune so haunting, is it the same as the majesty of a rAgam treated in a Carnatic music concert?

Would like your thoughts on this. I am not very articulate about this right now, and would like to think it through.

When I was young, I listened to the radio...really, because Musical Band Box was on during Sunday afternoons. My parents did not like "western" music, but I fell in love with the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, and all the rest, and would listen to this radio programme quietly, with the old Murphy valve radio turned on, but with the round volume dial turned down low....

And this song, which must have been one of the earliest "rap" songs, was one that I loved...

I can't find a video of it, perhaps it's too old for that, but here are the lyrics:


Lorne Green Lyrics

Ringo Lyrics

Narrated:

They lie in boot hills all through the west.
The outlaws, the gunslingers, the Billy the Kids and worse.
Say a fella like the coward that shot Bill Hickock in the back.
Theres always one like that in every time of history.
Most of them were varmints, but every once in a while, in one of them,
there may have lived a man...

Spoken lyrics:

He lay face down in the desert sand
clutching a six gun in his hand
Shot from behind I thought he was dead
for under his heart was an once of lead
But a spark still burned so I used my knife
and late that night I saved the life
of Ringo

I nursed him 'til the danger passed
the days went by he mended fast
and then from dawn 'til setting sun
he practiced with that deadly gun
and hour on hour I watched in awe
No human being could match the draw
of Ringo

One day we rode the mountain crest
and I went east and he went west
I took to law and wore a star
while he spread terror near and far
with lead and blood he gained such fame
all through the west they feared the name
of Ringo

I knew someday I'd face the test
which one of us would be the best
and sure enough the word came down
that he was holed up in the town
I left the posse out on the street
and I went in alone to meet
Ringo

They said my speed was next to none
but my lightning draw had just begun
when I heard a blast that stunned my wrist
The gun went flying from my fist
and I was looking down the bore
of the deadly 44
of Ringo

They say that was the only time
that anyone had seen him smile
He slowly lowered his gun and then
he said to me "We're even, friend."
And so at last I understood
that there was still a spark of good
in Ringo

I blocked the path of his retreat
he turned and stepped into the street
a dozen guns spit fire and lead-

A moment later
he lay dead

The town began to shout and cheer
Nowhere was there shed a tear
for Ringo

The story spread throughout the land
that I had beaten Ringo's hand
and it was just the years they say
that made me put my guns away
but on his grave they can't explain
the tarnished star above the name
of Ringo






I was young, and Ringo's fate brought a tear to my eye...for a moment now, as I read the words, the vanished suns of my lost youth shone upon me again, and I was back in Calcutta on a hot muggy Sunday afternoon, with the fan lazily creaking, listening close to the loudspeaker cones behind the old radio....

Madonna is not known for the kind of song that this one is; the music, the lyrics, and the video are one of my great favourites...




Madonna with all her clothes on is unusual, isn't she?

I didn't know that the official version had the Disney characters,I've only listened to the music before, this was the first time I googled for the video:






Here's Top Of The World, another of my favourites:






The first video mentions the factoid that Karen used to collect Disney memorabilia...well, the only factoid that *I* can remember is, this golden-voiced woman died of anorexia...what a tragic waste of talent!

I usually listen to the songs on old Tamizh movies as I sit and type and just got to hear that beautiful song, "Parakkum, panthu parakkum"....and I tried to google for it, and found that the movie running on my TV set is "paNakkAra kudumbam" (Rich family). But when I tried to get the YouTube video of the song, I got the message that it has been removed due to "terms of use violation". This seems to be the problem with several other Tamizh film song videos as well.

Where would I be able to get a youtube of this delightful song (where the rhythm of the song is maintained by the "pock" of the shuttlecock being hit by the badminton rackets!)? Would be grateful if someone could send me a link...

Spent a lovely afternoon playing board games, and then a very pleasant evening with VV ...and learnt a lot more about him, and about the Eagles.

VV is both a guitarist and flautist (no, that doesn't mean he flauts the rules) and seems to straddle eastern and western music with ease...and when we got to talking about difficulties with the guitar, I mentioned how AM had been very frustrated, trying to reproduce what the Eagles played in the song, "Hotel California", he instantly put on the song for us...and we all enjoyed that marvellous piece of guitar-playing. He told us that there were 6 box guitars and one bass guitar playing....and that when the Eagles broke up, and someone asked, when they would get back together again, the reply had been, "When hell freezes over."

So when they got back...just once...., they made an album which was called "Hell Freezes Over"....my favourites in that album are Tequila Sunrise and, of course...Hotel California...quite literally, "haunting" lyrics, and music that makes me lose myself!

Want to hear it?

Here it is:





Oh...that guitar-playing....

This is a clear illustration of what a photograph means to different people.

I wanted to post a message for Deepavali on my blog, and decided to try out online editing on Photobucket and I chose a (yes, I admit it) somewhat random photograph for the trial, and since I was running out of time, posted the pic with the message added.

Comments as usual were few, but when I met a friend over the weekend, I asked why s/he had not commented. "Why did you choose THAT photograph?" this person asked.

To this person, the quality of the photograph is more important than the message, so the feeling was that the less-than-desired quality of the photograph did not merit a reciprocal comment.

To me, the documentation of the message ("Happy Deepavali") is more important than whether the flowers are in focus and crisp and clear and the photo is well-composed.

Different strokes for different folks! Now, when I see no comments, I don't know if it's the bad photograph that people are refraining from criticising, or the message itself is not important enough for them to respond to...

Hm. Something to be mulled over!


So meanwhile, here's a less-than-perfect, but to me, lovely photograph of the very pretty girl who played the part of the heroine of "Choon Hyang", a Korean musical by 20 children from Theatre Seoul, the review of which I will be putting up on Citizen Matters shortly.... it was a wonderful way to spend a birthday, with friends, watching children from a land far away, dance, and sing, and entertain us.....





A thing (or a human being) of beauty IS a joy forever!




*

Evoca progressively cut down the time and then sent an email asking me to stump up $30 or my account would be deleted. (Not, we will keep your account, of course, but make it a paid one, but....pay or we will delete.) So a kind friend helped me and moved all my songs so far to


Muziboo

The name may be awkward but it's a good. mewpsych...if you are still active on LJ...do shift your music, too!