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 28^th 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.

Ilayaragam's Debut - Arangetram

Hardly a week passes by without one hearing about yet another Bay Area desi band. This time, it is a Tamil light music band called 'IlayarAgam' (translated as 'Youthful Melody').

Ilayaragam is steadfast in promoting their vision, which is to (a) play only melodies and (b) to stay away from kuttu pATTu business. They want to play melodies, which are masterpieces and stir our souls every time we listen to them. These are songs which we have all been listening to since our childhood and will cherish them in our hearts, till the day we forget ourselves. As the band name itself suggests, the song list would consist mostly of Maestro Ilayaraja's compositions. Good numbers from other composers (who have been keyboardists with Ilayaraja or keyboardists with Ilayaraja's keyboardists), :-) will also be chosen.

Ilayaragam's vision is bold and greatly differentiated from other Tamil light music band's 'formula driven' agenda of serving a 'buffet' of Tamil songs, of which kuttu pATTu is a standard item. It's a highly commendable vision and I wish Ilayaragam good luck in spreading its melodic fragrances far and wide.

On March 7 2009, Ilayaragam went on stage for the first time. Their debut performance was called Arangetram (literally meaning going up on the stage for the first time). Although short and sweet with only 7 songs, it was a very well received show. The audience greatly enjoyed the song selection and went home craving for more. They raved about the orchestration, especially the keys, lead, rhythm, bass and drums, which are absolutely essential for bringing an Ilaiyaraja number to life on stage. Although I liked all the songs, my personal favorite was Oh Butterfly - what a melody from Ilaiyaraja! The band just nailed it and I had a great time mixing the sound for that song and also of course for the entire show.

The song list and order was as follows:

1. Overture (Original composition by Vidya Shankar in Raga HarikAmbhoji)
2. Sangeetha Megam
3. Enna Sattam
4. Sundari Neeyum
5. Oh Butterfly
6. Ooru Sanam
7. Nenjukkul
8. Ennamma Kannu

The Ilayaragam Arangetram show consisted of the following members:

Singers: Rangarajan Ramachandran, Gopal Tiruvengadam, TN Arunagiri, Janani Vishwanathan
Chorus: Srividya Guru, Swetha Venkataraman, Jenita Mariadasan and Uthra Ramachandran
Keyboards Main: Vidya Shankar
Keyboards: Ramakrishnan Guru and Nathan Narayanan
Conductor: Ramakrishnan Guru
Bass Guitar: Rangarajan Ramachandran
Lead Guitar: Easwar Swaminathan
Rhythm Guitar: Ashok Jayaraman
Drums: Saravanan Chidambaram
Pads: Nathan Narayanan and Logesh Manohar
Sound Engineering and Recording: TN Arunagiri and Nathan Narayanan
MC: Anitha Rangarajan

Videos are available here: http://tinyurl.com/iragam-videos

Audio recording highlights are available here: