This is an outstanding track from the movie “Morning Raga”. Instrumentation-wise, that is…
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Indian Ocean, the band
Starts with a crazy drums fill, and the song is a roller coaster ride from there. There are big drops, fast moves, all very dynamic about this song.
The track reminds of the crazy drummer from the movie, enacted by a real life drummer Shaleen Sharma, an engineer by qualification (from IIT-Roorkee) and a musician by choice, one of the founders of the avant-garde music group from Delhi, Indian Ocean and later formed a band named Agosh with other engineer-turned musicians Go-pal and A-nand (hence, AGoSh). So all the craziness and action you see in the movie, are somewhat real.
(On the topic, Agosh’ debut album was Paisa, released back in 2000, and composed music for the movie Zor).
Bass and Drums in Morning Raga
The bass playing is awesome. If I am not wrong, it is played by the quintessential bass player of India, Keith Peters. There are portions where he moves as fast as the drums, and there are parts where he plays counters to the drums.
The vocals is rather bland, for the awesome backing instrumentation. The guitar provides a nice rhythm with the wah-wah, and the drums are happening and reminds me of, well, for no better comparison, fast moving Rajdhani Express!
Once again the keyboard shines, like many other tracks from the same movie. The nice flute melody rocks, and later he switches into an organ. More chromatic improvisation follows.
I just wish they had done more with the song, such as a bass solo of sort.
The blame for the music goes to Amit Heri and Mani Sharma, for creating one of the most innovative albums of the decade. While Amit Heri has been in the jazz scene for long, but Mani Sharma is little known beyond the Telugu film industry. If that’s the result of their collaboration, I hope they do much more together in future for us music lovers.
This is the second song from the Morning Raga I am going to write about. I am totally in love with the music, even some 4 yrs after I heard the music for the first time. And pretty sure, this music is always going to live close to me.
The track:
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This song, largely a keyboard solo. Its an instrumental piece, solidly backed by a faithful rhythm section that is very groovy, and continuous. Guitar does a little, but very effective, in providing counters and some interesting rhythm patterns. Otherwise, largely the bass and drums holds the song together.
Morning Raga
The structure of the song is very simple, so probably doesn’t have the intricacies of few other songs from this album which is colored with Jazz palette. Its a standard verse-chorus-solo-verse structure, but for the nice keyboard solo, the tune rocks!
Released in 2005, this album remains one of the finest of the decade in terms of experimentation, musicianship, and unorthodox treatment.
Music credit:
Amit Heri & Mani Sharma
I believe they do guitars and keyboards, respectively. Yet to find out the other instrumentalists on the band, as soon as I find, I will update here (if you, the reader, know, please write in the comments section below).
This is going to be the first of a series of song reviews of “Morning Raga”, I am going to write over next few days.
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Morning Raga is one of my most favorite Indian jazz albums. Its one of the finest experiments to come out of the Bollywood music industry for sure. Purists of Indian classical may not accept it, but I think it is always cool to mix genres. And they have done an excellent job in putting in elements as far apart as Jazz and Carnatic classical into Morning Raga tunes.
All blame goes to Amit Heri and Mani Sharma to create this most innovative sound of this movie. Amit Heri (can be found here on youtube) is a jazz guitar player, and hails form Bangalore. Mani Sharma is a music director, lesser known outside telugu film industry.
Keeping with the theme of the movie, where an Indian classical singer revisits her classical roots with the help of a younger generation band influenced by western music, the music director duo has done justice to both genres (in some tracks at least, while few other tracks are pure pure semi-classical Indian tunes).
The instrumentation on this track creates a solid backing for the vocals improvisation on the top of it. There are no words, but just alaap (hence the name Alaap Jam). The rhtyhm section is all about its groovy bass. Its sad that the song is really short.
If you look at the attached picture, the song is a perfect sound for this image.
If there is a term called Parallel music as in Parallel Cinema, then the music of Morning Raga has to be it.
One of motivations behind starting this blog was to bring some of the finest music from our times for the millions of Indian music lovers around the world. Some movies fail to make a mark at so-called box office barometer of success, hence almost everything associated with the movie fails to register in people’s mind.
This song Jhin min jhin is a perfect example! Maqbool as a movie is surely one of the finest of last decade from the bollywood factory. Though I can go on about the movie, direction, performances (Pankaj Kapoor, Irfan Khan, Tabu at their individual best), the dark-beauty of the screenplay, and is a must-watch for all movie lovers. Unfortunately, the movie failed to be a commercial success, though it gathered a lot of critical acclaim, but that’s a topic of discussion for some other blog. Let me refocus on this song.
First the song:
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Vishaal Bharadwaj, let me tell you - he never ceases to amaze me with his creativity, as a music director or as a movie director, or even as a writer or a singer! How can one person be so creative in all these different fields and yet be nothing short of the best in each of them! Rare breed indeed (though Farhan Akhtar has been added to that list lately).
If you are listening to this song for the first time, may be listen to it several times till it sinks into you. Because it gets more and more beautiful every time you listen to it. And the layers reveal one after another. There is quite a bit happening in this song.
Sung by Sadhana Sargam, Ustad Sultan Khan, Anuradha Shriram & Rakesh Pandit. The instrumentation develops gradually and Vishal has used the effect of percussioin and bass very well. The female parts (mostly sung in chorus) are double the speed, and Ustad Sultan Khan’s parts are half the pace. And towards the end of the song, the vocals of Ustad remains the same pace while the rhtyhm doubles up the pace. That juxtaposing creates an interesting musical pattern. The rhythm section is an interesting mix of bass and drums with Indian percussion.
Sultan Khan’s voice, as always, simultaneously demonstrates silkiness and with lots of earthy feel to it. Its the musical equivalence of aged wine. In some way, there is a touch of divinity in his voice - you feel the devotion when he is singing Allah ka pyaara woh to!
There is an alternative extended version here: Not much difference other than the initial bol (rhythmic vocalization).
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There is not much in the music video, the song is to be experienced in the context of the film. There is a little clip of the song (watch the following video @ 1m 34s) from the making of the movie interview with Vishal B and others from the movie. The video doesn’t add much to the beauty of the song, except the fact that song & the vocal tone perfectly demonstrates the exuberance of the situation.
I know in internet age, its sacrilegious to report something that is 5 days old, but this song review comes 5 yrs after the 2004 music release, but I had to do it, because I didn’t want to lose this beautiful song in the course of time. And I started this blog only in early 2009.
Other songs from the film are average, yet Ru-Ba-Ru is a decent one, and suprisingly rendered by Daler Mehndi (you will never guess its him from what we have come to know him as).
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And Chingari, a song by Vishal’s better half, Rekha Bhradwaj (singer of ‘Namak’ from Omkara) is well-sung too.
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Vishal’s movies and music are one of the best combination of cinematic poetry that the Indian audience experiences. His experimentation with music goes beyond the human limit, if Maqbool is more traditional in terms of orchestration, he offers a different dimension in music of ‘No Smoking’ (though the movie didn’t work, but listen to the background score, its 100% pure jazz - sorry, I don’t have the audio clips, and in fact I am also searching for them).
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Dasvidaniya: Music by Kailash Kher, Naresh and Paresh Kamath
“Alvida”: composed by members of well known Indian band ‘Kailasa’.
Kailash Kher has sung the song beautifully, and the music composed by Kailash Kher, (Naresh and Paresh) Kamath Brothers. (I hear even the drums are played by Kurt Peters, who also plays for Kailasa, so I didn’t get why they didn’t give credit to the band as music composer, may be some legal issues).
The song is a very well composed, has got nice guitar parts, harmonies, great rhythm guitar, and a great chorus section, all elements that is needed to make a great soft rock ballad.
From composition point of view, I always felt, they could have added a harmony in fifth at the lines “Ye hi hai sach to har pal ko”. If any of you trying to do a cover of the song, try that. Also, feel free to send me a link to any youtube clip or so of any cover version you have done. I will be happy to link it up (of course, editor’s discretion will be in full force).
A note about the movie, while I am at it. Its one of the wonderful little movie of this year, and a movie with a message. Watch it in case you have missed. Rated by very critical online movie watcher bloggers at PFC (Passion For Cinema), its amongst the best of the year 2008.
There was even a remix version of the song, but I thought the original version was way better, essentially because the feel of the song doesn’t lend itself very well to be a dance tune. But I guess, like in 80’s, many songs had its ’sad’ counterpart, nowadays, the ‘remix’ counterpart is a common inclusion. Check the version here.
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I would put the chords and tabs of the song once I figure them out. And if any of you have already worked it out, send it to me, I will put it here (with credits to you, of course).
Apart from Alvida, the other songs from the movie were so so. With due respect to Kailasa’s music, I am just trying to be critical here, and writing about the best song of the album. The song ‘Muskura’ sung by Sonu Nigam is very reminiscent of Mohd Rafi style.
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Do not forget to check this instrumental version of the same song, which has the true 70’s feel to it (accordian and clean guitar sound).
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The song Mumma by Kailash Kher is another good one too.
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Finally, play all songs here:
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(On the topic, Agosh’ debut album was Paisa, released back in 2000, and composed music for the movie Zor).
