Music Review on "Thendral Vandhu Theendum Boedhu"

In case you read what all interests me, you sud have found Music in it. In a way, I like many Music Director's compositions ranging from K.V.Mahadevan, A.M.Raja, Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy, Ilayaraaja, Rahman, Vidyasagar to the present generation of Yuvan, Ramesh Vinayagam.

But, I must say that of all of them, my scale tilts in favor of Ilayaraaja. He is my favorite composer of all times.

mm.. I have heard many songs of his and have been spell bound as to how he is able to compose these songs.

One such song is "Thendral vandhu theendum boedhu" from the film Avadharam. When I heard it I wasn't quite impressed with the song. But, when I happened to read a review of this song in the net, I was astonished and in a way felt ashamed of not knowing the importance of the song.

After having read the review, whenever I hear the song, I feel like I want to shed tears. Such was the composition and itz scintillating.

Herez the review of the song:
The beginning of the song in a way summarizes Ilayaraja's style - Chorus girls singing thanath thandha (Tamil folk scat) in a canonlike fashion!
What begins like a few voices suddenly reaches orchestral proportions - with texture added, little by little, layer by layer.
These girls sing in a western style but you can definitely hear the slides and complex phrase structures that are Indian. (0:08)
Then the coarse casual voice comes in, joyously humming, but the background strings are divine, playing counterpoints that give me goose bumps all over. They seem to go to places I have never been taken before to.
There you go! You have an artiste who has used the western craft to ornament the Indian soul.

Here are a few more things that catch my attention:

The pallavi is sung in a folk open-mouthed un ornamented voice, but shows such a raw confidence and simplicity. The pallavi is a long one and anupallavi (vandhu vandhu poguthamma) touches new highs, and you hear, strings, bells, synth koovals everywhere. Rich sound!

The simple rock beat is embellished with aperiodic fills on ethnic drum sounds. You also hear fretless bass filling the pallavi endings. The first interlude at 1:30 uses a simple seed, a 4 note rhtyhm TumDumDumDum, which is articulated both by the girls and a drum.This forms the bed for the entire first interlude. See how he first establishes this bed, one element at a time (drums and girls, then the string).

First solo on this bed is Chorus girls humming a haunting line joined by strings. This seems influenced by western harmony. But then the Second solo is soulfully played by a clarinet like synth, with the chorus girls singing the same melody.

This gives us the first secret of Raja's composition, on how he acheives unification. He composes a single lead melody line and then arranges it into sections and parts of dramatically varying arrangements. Inspite of orchestral colors dramatically varying, the melody holds together the whole piece like a story.


You can also see how the interlude has a peaking structure. First part starts from silence and second part increases tension. The clarinet solo is highest tension point before wrapping up.

The lyrics of the first charanam speak of the unspeakableness of innocent love. (1:50)
The lines
Everum sollamalae pookkalum vasam veesudhae
Oravum illamalae irumanam edho pesudhu
Everum sollamalae kuyilellam thena padudhu
Edhuvum sollamalae manaselam inippa inikkudhu
speak of the joy of infatuation and innocence at heart.

Raja follows the traditional song structures where the charanam (corresponding to the verse of a western pop song) is simpler in structure and lyrics is given emphasis. The melody is not supposed to be very catchy here, but the meaning is.
There is very interesting percussion work and stabbing violins. The slides in pesudhu, padudhu is so moving.
Again the charanam peaks at Odai Neerodai. and then a rounding off at Nilaiya Nilladhu.
When the pallavi is recapitulated, the orchestration is very minimalistic and tabla-synth, and bass guitar create sweet bed for it.
The second interlude brings a new surprise. (2:53) A typical Raja silent break and horns announce a new dawn. It is as if this is a new song.

When the girls hum, new keys are shown.

Against a horn ostinato, the strings play their theme, I get the picture of a thick forest flowing rivers and beetles.

The final recapitulation of the pallavi at 4:16 is almost silent ­ imprinting the melody on you.

The pallavi's role is to summarize the mood of a song, and carry its theme. Anupallavi has a flute counterpoint singing along.

If you observe the melody, you see a skillful use of the notes. The pallavi is calm and low range. Anupallavi stretches it a bit, but the highest notes are reserved for middle of the charanam where the song reaches it climax. This is typical skeletal design for Carnatic songs and follows the grammar of story telling, where you progressively put a character into more and more difficult obstacles, with the climax being the most difficult one!

The song showcases many of Raja's unique marks: Wall of sound created by layers of counter melodies, mixing and matching folk idioms with western idioms effortlessly, (fine grained fusion, if you will), dramatic use of silence, use of hummings and instruments instead of percussives rhythms as beds for song and interludes, ability to create catchy melody out of long pallavis!

And keeping all this craft in balance to serve the main goal of music - touch your heart with overwhelming emotion!

MS adds:

It is a pity that (you and) I have just two ears. And a bigger grievance is that both hear the same sound at the same time. It is an absolute misfortune that we don't have multiple ears which would, like inverted counterparts of specialized speakers, be able to absorb only particular track and send these signals to brain. This kind of stupid realization comes to you when you listen to great masters whose overwhelming complexity makes you wonder if music is man made or divine. This happens to me when I listen to Bach, Mozart and most particularly some of IR's master pieces. The former two are still a li'l alien to me, since I was pretty much born (1976) and brought up with IR's music. When as a school goer I ran into the masterpiece "yEdho moham" I did not understand why I liked it. I liked it. Now after some experience with harmony theory and some maturing, whenever I hear a song, I start wondering "what are the chords" used in that song. Some time I find that I am increasingly falling into the ditch of dissecting songs and start feeling, "Hey am I losing the main purpose of why a song is made ? appreciation as a listener with a heart and not brain? Am I gonna just hear the notes and not evade my questioning attitude to simply lose myself in the song ?" At juntures like this, somehow songs like thendral vandhu theeNdumpodhu, songs of guru (malayalam), yedho moham, ennuLLE ennuLLe and a lot more of IR assure me that I have still no lost my "lay listener" in me who would not 'think' about the song but just listen it for my soul. These songs not only assure the presence of a listner in me, but also launch a severe attack on my spurts of pride which would falsely assure me of being endowed with ears which can "hear them all and document". These songs give a wild shock of the genial reality that these maestros have produced as if it is one of the easiest things they do on earth like walking. Surely when tendulkar bats, it seems like the easiest profession unless one pads up only to be confronted with the nuances which are impossible to master if u are, just a worker and not a genius. It is at that juncture that a mortal would crave for more gift from god, say in my case more ears or more dissecting ability.

Thendral is a song which has a stamp of complete authority of IR. I won't say much since our respectable DFer RJAY has written more than what could possibly be said. The drums are the smoothest and u feel they are almost non-existent. The contrapuntal choral harmony, the unassuming warm pad that makes the song sail in the smooth waters, the awesome string section and what not.. All for a girl who is blind. I have somewhere read about musical notes being associated with colors. And you know musical notes could just be colors, but you still would need a Titan to paint.

Swamiji of DF has no idea what genre this song belongs to. Well, call it IR genre. Who cares anyway ?!!