There are challenges for a music director which go beyond satisfying the public. A music director for a balachander movie has to get absolutely involved in the story, see through the eyes of the director and then start composing music, keping in mind the eccentricities of the character. The MD for a Sundar.C movie has to keep listening to scores of Arabian music and pick six of them. A MD for a rajni movie should always bear the weight of Tamil Nadu and also be wary of vandalism in response to anything below exceptional fit.
But there is a far greater challenge for any MD rising now that it combines many of the above mentioned difficulties and that is scoring for a vijay movie. Apart from bearing in mind all expectations of a self proclaimed superstar, a MD has to tune his songs in exactly the same culture as an earlier work, or for that matter earlier works. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be a music director for a vijay movie, because not only have his films, but also songs, have become stereotype.
I have heard from my music teacher (who is a bass guitarist with deva and has worked for IR, MSV, ARR etc to VS and now srikanth deva) that vijay keeps demanding the same genre of songs. If you look at his movies, you can clearly find a pattern which consists of a fast beat message delivery song, two tapori / slum type song, a sultry number with an item bomb, a reggae based melody with the herione and one song that praises vijay with wordings like ’’ solluvadhu vijay , ungal nanban, ilaya thalabathi etc’’
In that regard, only Vidhya Sagar has managed exceptional music in Ghilli. Devi Prasad has not done a bad job at all, but musical value of this album remains way below par.
It is very difficult to write a review for an average music. We need to be inspired, either pleased or angered, by the music to write about it. Here my inspiration is anger towards Vijay.
The songs are average Vijay movie stuff.
Va va en thalaiva is an average vijay praise with wasted talent from shankar mahadevan. Nothing very musical about this number except for die-hard vijay fans.
kanmoodi Quite a good number tuned and sung by devi prasad. Has some very good interlude music and quite a good synthesized sound mixing. But I guess this is the song the devi prasad had used in a telugu movie and has rehashed it. This has obviously provoked the producer of the telugu movie to sue the MD for intellectual property rights violation.
Gundu maanga The striking aspect of this song is malathi’s voice. She is really a fantastic singer. Having seen her perform in many stage shows, I can vouch that she sings in at least 20 different voices, apart from the manmada raasa tone. Very sad to see that the music world is not using her voice for anything else. Other than that, nothing special about the song. A catchy tune to make the front benches go to trance.
Dai Dai Dai Kattikkoda A wasted sunitha sarathy. and karthik is all that I can say. I have seen sunitha sarathy perform live in our company’s cultural fest and believe me she is exceptional in classical music as she is in pure western. But I guess, ’’Thoodhu varuma’’ song, which gave her the biggest break is actually stalling her progress by typecasting her voice, just the way manmada raasa is doing to malathi. A very average number.
Vaadi Vaadi One thing to appreciate about this number is vijay’s voice. It blends really well with the song and his singing talent also shows up very well. A typical vijay number sung by ’’ungal ilaya thalapathi’’
Unless you are a hard core vijay fan, listen to it once, and walk off. Not at all an album to go into a music lover’s colection.