Musical Conversations - ARR

A R Rahman has done some nice background pieces in songs which are basically a conversation between either 2 instruments or an instrument and a vocal. These are not question and answer types but more like a real conversation. Listen to 4 such conversations below. Interestingly all of them are towards the ending of the respective songs. It is more like a postlude.


The 1st one is "En swasa kaatre" from "En swasa kaatre". Nice conversation of veena and chitra's voice. I love the veena in this piece. The chord and bass backing is also very good. I think this is in Nilambari raga. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The 2nd one is "Azhage sugama" from "Paarthale Paravasam". A nice conversation between piano and violin. Violin is played by Ganesh I believe. I read that it is a mixture of dwijawanti and sahana ragam.

The 3rd one is "Uyirum Neeye" from "Pavithra". Veena and violin converse here in Khamas raga I think.

The 4th one is "Netru Illatha Maatram" from "Pudhiya Mugam". Nice sitar and flute combination. You can also listen to a veena in the third line. This is the same piece played in the first interlude. But in the first interlude it is a sitar and veena conversation. And at the end, the sitar piece is the same, but a different flute response. Flute must be by Naveen.

Let me know if there are other similar songs by ARR. I will also put a separate post on such conversations in Ilaiyaraaja's music. So let me know the relevant song interludes that come to your mind in IR's music.

6 comments:

  1. Good finds! Nice to see you're blogging regularly again!

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  2. The first interlude of July Matham from Pudhiya Mugam comes to mind, though it's more of a conversation between two guitars, one on the left channel and the other on the right. And maybe it's really more of the question answer type you mentioned, since they repeat each other. Will post here if I can think of any more.

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  3. Thanks Kannan. Regarding July Matham, it is more like an imitation form rather than Q&A (I think). Hence, I didn't include it. Infact there is a very nice piano+flute instrumental by ARR in the film Kisna. That is more of an imitation form and hence I didn't include it.

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  4. Ramesh ,
    The first one is much like a conversation between two people of different dialects . The second conversation starts with an arrogant violin and a pleasant piano...later,it seems as if the violin is surrendering to the Piano . The third one is as though a Teacher is asking a question to a student and some other student is replying instead of him .The best of the lot is Netru Illaadha - Pudhiya Mugam .
    Nice findings ..Good .

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  5. Thanks Kumar, that was a nice imagination !

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  6. Ah, i visited this blog before and went through this post. Good effort to assemble all the conversations in a clip :-) Your selections are spot on. Unfortunately, not many people remember "En Swasa Kaatre" song, although many fans can identify with other selections here. That song from En Swasa Katre was a different and underrated song.

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