This song is one of my most favorites from M Jayachandran. A very melodious number, originally sung by Karthik, I love this song for its soulful music and orchestration. I had posted an unplugged version of this song before and now here it comes with full karaoke track. This is my first recorded song after marriage which means after a gap of more than 2 months. 🙂
Dedicating this song to all those “modernists” of music who say melody sucks (the term “melody” here is not used in the musical terms, but as a substitute for soulful music) but seldom knows that even most of their musical favorites have a strong base of melody. The God of the modernists is A R Rahman, who is mostly remembered for his melodious numbers than his forgettable fast paced songs (remember Roja, Karuthamma etc). They say A R Rahman is “fresh” in orchestration, even though he has not created anything fresh than what many Indo-American fusion artistes have already done. But since film music is the popular form of music in India, Rahman continues to don the role of bringing freshness to Indian popular music scene (I respect A R Rahman for another thing – for giving proper credits to lead instrumentalists in the album cover).
I pity those modernists whose idea of “Freshness” in music is very limited. They often point to other musicians from across the globe – for example, a Sufi singer who has sung only Sufi music to his death, or a musician of a particular Genre who has never tried any other Genre than what he/she has been singing from the very beginning and they call it “fresh”. But when an Indian musician/singer does the same thing, it’s called “boring”. And their enemy #1 is K J Yesudas.
I listen to all kind of music, perhaps except death metal and appreciate each of them for it’s own good and according to my mood to hear a particular genre of music. But to call an entire society’s taste “boring”, just because they listen to Yesudas or melodious music in general? Well, Pity is the word.
Music: M Jayachandran
Lyrics: Gireesh Puthenchery
Movie: Orkkuka Vallappozhum
Singer: Karthik
Download “Etho January Maasam (cover)” MP3 file (4:09 MB)
