quarta-feira, 29 de setembro de 2010

Life after Bollywood



Life after Bollywood

Source: Speak Up, Ed 260
English Level: Intermediate
British and Indian Standard Accent


G.S.Rajan is an Indian musician. Earlier in his career he composed music for the Bollywood Film Industry. But he subsequently fell in love with his country’s classical musical tradition and dedicated his energies to studying and playing the work of its finest composers. A flautist, he also performs his own work. Speak Up met with him when he recently played at a special “monsoon concert”. We began by talking about the fact that monsoons are seen as a source of celebration in Indian Culture:

WATER MUSIC

G.S. Rajan

(Indian Accent)

In Indian it’s different. It’s like a celebration because a tropical climate, a lot of sun and dry climate, and when the monsoon comes, it cools down the place and the rivers gets a lot of water and it’s good for irrigation. As far as music is concerned, we have monsoon ragas, ragas means a scale, a combination of notes is raga, so special melodies for monsoons, special folk songs, even the tribal’s (tribal people) used to have songs to welcome the monsoon and they used to dance while it’s raining, so a lot of importance for monsoon.

GREAT NAMES

We then asked him to talk about India’s classical music tradition.

G.S. Rajan
One of the most respected composers, who’s treated as a saint in India, is Tyagaraja. At the moment we have more than 50.000 of his compositions available, and he was not bothered about the world, he was in a different world, singing and praying to God. He never sat and composed, it was just coming out of him. So what we have is more than 50.000 compositions are available of one composer; that is Tyagaraja.

NORTHERN SONGS

Then, we have, in the Northern side, the great composer and singer, Tanser. Tanser has created a lot of compositions, he has used ragas of the five elements, which is made of the human body, the fire, the sky, the earth, the wind, so all that has been exploited by, of course, all the composer. There are the two main important composers, one from South and one from North, worshiped like Gods in Indian classical music

The Man and his Music (No audio)

The two composers mentioned by G.S. Rajan in this interview are the Carnatic Musician Tyagaraja (1767-1847) and the Hindustani musician Tansen (1493 or 1506). In his concerts, G.S. Rajan likes to play their work, as well as some of his own “raga symphonies”. For further information, visit G.S. Rajan’s official website: http://www.malabarian.com As he explain, the site is named after the Malabar coast, the region in Southwest India (today it forms part of Kerala State) where he was born.


Nenhum comentário: