May 24, 2009

Raga Shack's First Jam - Audio Snippets

The piece is called (or rather I have named it as) 'Talai Vidi' since it is Vidi's (Vidya Shankar) brainchild and he is our 'talai' (head in Tamil) meaning that he is the one directing (read micromanaging) us on this piece. 'Talai Vidi' also means fate in Tamil!

It is based on Raga Harikambhoji scale melody.

Harikambhoji (Sanskrit: हरिकाम्भोजि, Tamil: ஹரிகாம்போஜி) is a sampoorna (i.e. having all the 7 resolvable frequencies) rāgam in Carnatic music (musical scale of South Indian classical music). It is the 28th Melakarta rāgam (parent scale) in the 72 melakarta rāgam system.

If we take C as the root note, the Harikambhoji scale can be derived as follows:

Ascending: C D E F G A A#
Descending: C A# A G F E D

By the way, this piece was used as an overture to Ilayaragam's debut concert.

Here are some snippets:



Raga Shack crew that participated in this piece:

Rhythm/Lead Guitar: Easwar Swaminathan
Bass Guitar: Krishna Tangirala
Keys: Vidya Shankar
Vocals: TN Arunagiri
Mridangam: Nathan Narayanan
Bamboo Flute: Sridhar Narayanan
Drums: Padmanaban Ramasamy

Trivia: guess who has used this Raga Harikambhoji and 'popularized' it? Yes, it is of course Maestro Ilayaraja. The songs that come to my mind are:

1. Mazhai Varudu from the Tamil movie 'Raja Kaiya Vacha'
2. Aamani Paadave Haayiga from the Telugu movie 'Geetanjali'

If I am in error in assigning the raga to these, please let me know.