I saw this when a friend of mine pointed me to this video of an episode from the Malayalam musical reality show – Idea Star Singer. One of the contestants sang the beautiful Yesudas-Salil Chowdhury song “Shyaama Meghame” and the judges began to comment. The pointers, as usual, were based on the adherence to the original. After the famous Sangathi Man‘s comments, the voice-of-Mohan Lal came in. And he started lecturing and here it is:
“You people are addicted to the Tamil songs. Agreed that there are songs with such level of “sangathis” in Tamil, but there are no songs with such variations like we have in Malayalam. So if you try to sing this song in Tamil style, such Sangathis won’t come out.”
There is absolutely no reason to bring in Tamil music there. And if I am to believe what M G Sreekumar had said, what were music directors like Ilaiyaraja doing all these years in music? According to M G Sreekumar, none of them have done any songs with variations in Tamil yet.
Though I am scratching my head to find out the difference between the words “sangathi” and “variations”, I can’t also help thinking whether this is an out-pour of a singer who could not make his mark outside Malayalam music industry. Considering that his success in the Malayalam music industry is mainly attributed to his friend, schoolmate Mohan Lal, because their voices sounds alike, and to his friend director Priyadarshan, we have reasons to believe that he was just pouring his anger on a poor boy who came to test his luck with singing.
PS: My friend also comments that Salil Chowdhury is a Bengali and not a Malayali. So if he had the “variations” composed in Malayalam, he would sure have done it in his own language!
