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Thursday, February 03, 2005

Vidyasagar

The song ore manam from villain has been on my mind for couple of days now - it has been rendered soulfully by Hariharan /Chandana Bala

Vidyasagar is the music director.

Quite a talented music director. Has created very soulful melodies, catchy foot-tapping songs and equally listless/lifeless songs.

His style is a mixture of many different music directors on top of which he has created his own trademark. You can hear a IR, MSV and ARR - three legends in their own right. It is very tough to be not influenced by the style of any of these three music directors (which is why they stand apart from each other and at the same time stand out as composers)

He uses neo-age sounds/instruments setting the dreamy/wonderland ambience (ARR style), while the structure of his songs are typically IRish and melody ranges from punjabi bhangras, to pukka carnatic passages and western classic interludes, to fast foot-tapping desi numbers.

Durbari Kanada has proved to be his secret to producing chart-busters - but the remark does not do full justice to his ability. He has given many hit songs based on many ragas/styles and come out in flying colors. Early in his career background music (BGM) was a weak point - often people complained of high volumed instrumentation - now he has taken a 'leaf' out of Hollywood movies - e.g. just observe the opening piece of BGM in Dhool - if you heard the BGM withouth watching the visual - you would swear it is Hollywood movie :-)

Vidyasagar announced his arrival with Jai Hind and followed it up with Priyam - Dilruba and Karna, Villadhi Villan, Pasum Pon etc 2001-2003 was his golden era - where he was the undisputed producer of chart busters.

Some of his songs that you'd want to not miss are Dilruba (Priyam), Malare Mounama(Karna), Madisaru Kattindu(Villadhi Villan), Thamara Poo(Pasum pon), Vennilave Vellai Poove(some movie starring Arjun, Meena) , Aasai Aasai (Dhool), (Some songs from Miss Madras that fail me now), Un samayal Arayil (Dhill), Ore Manam (Villan), Nee Katru (Nilavee vaa), Poo Vasam, Mouname Parvayal (Anbe sivam).

The best is a fusion attempt on 'Endaro Mahanu' based on Sri Ragam - the fusion is simply 'hair raising' and gives you goose bumps - very nicely done.

His nemesis has been the 'run of the mill' movies and lack consistency i.e. the number of songs that are good in a movie is nowhere close to what he can create. Rarely do two songs in the same movie carry such high quality songs (compare it with ARR and some of IR when they create, you'd rarely want to skip any song in a movie). If he can cut down on such 'slackness' and make improve his consistency - he can enter into the hall of legends soon..

May he continue to produce wonderful melodies

Long live the ear for good music.




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree...but somehow, I don't have great regards for Vidyasagar b'cos of some of the real copy cat songs - "Koduva meesai" from Dhool is the ditto copy of Delar Mehandi's "Ho jayagi teri balle balle" and the latest hit of "Konja neram konja vendum" from Chandramuki is again a copy of some of the Illayaraja's songs "Pagalile oru nilavinai kanden" and "Kalai nera poonguyil" but he has lots of scope for improvement.

Arvind Srinivasan said...

SV,

Sure he has a fair share of copied songs.

But when he belts out good numbers - they come out really well :-)

Actually, 'konja neram' sounds more like mazhai varudhu - basically i agree - heavily inspired :-)

Arvind Srinivasan said...

Mouname (villain) is dvijawanthi's classic exposition (Akilandeswari)

Anbe sivam had good songs, Malare mouname and many more :-)

George said...

I stumbled upon this post while searching for some information on the movie "Priyam" which was a fabulous collection of melodies by Vidyasagar. The songs were inventively arranged too. Vidya has done some awesome music in Malayalam, he still keeps doing on and off. The "Mahanubahu" arrangement is fabulous, I guess a bit of the credit for that track is also due to Stephen Devassy who arranged music in Vidya studio during that period. Its a pity that someone who knew how to churn out mind blowing interludes on the keyboard didn't quite hit the heights he ideally should have. Today we have musicians who are adept at using the tools that aid in music production but lack in musicality itself!