First Time in India. Review on Kadhal Konden Songs

?Kadhal Konden? is the first mainstream commercial movie in India for which an original soundtrack album is released. Yuvan Shankar Raja, the son of the legend Maestro Illayaraja, composed the music. As everyone knows, the album includes the background music of the movie with usual songs. In Hollywood, as there are no songs in the movie, they release OST albums for the movies. But in India, Why OST of the movies is not commercially released as albums?

Why OST albums are not released for Indian movies?

~ First of all, for 50% of movies made, they don?t give importance to background music.

Because music directors has to finish BG score for the movie within a short period. As it is added to the movie at the final point of postproduction work, they have to rush through the process for releasing the movie on date.

~ It lacks uniqueness. It is becoming stereotype and repetitive. A good score for a movie is that immediately after hearing the score without watching the visual one must be able to visualise the scene and the movie in which the scene is. But how many movies are coming with such unique scores. First of all, the Indian movie plots itself are not unique.

~ Mostly it is the instrumental versions of the songs in the same movie

~ Majority of cine-goers in India pay little attention to BG scores and even if they, they don?t enjoy it to an extent of buying OST albums of the movie.

~ Even though these kind of albums contains excellent score, it is very much dependant on the visuals, so one can understand, appreciate and enjoy the music only after watching the visuals.

~ Nowadays one or more theme music are composed and released in the album even before the movie is released. And this theme is repeated several times in the movie as the BGM.

~ And above all, the audio sales rate is pathetic because of 24X7 FM?s, CD Piracy and Net downloading etc., so audio companies hesitate to take risk to release OST albums which are purely instrumental and that to in a country where people are not yet matured enough to understand, appreciate and enjoy such albums.

Background Music.

Cinema is an art of sound and light. So, both eyes and ears are delighted by cinema. Being a powerful communicating media, it is effective only when it feeds in both eyes and ears. Background music is a musical monologue that speaks for dumb visuals. A movie can be made without songs but a movie can?t be made without background music.

I rate a music director based on his skills in composing BG score and not based o his song composing skills. Because in songs you have lyrics that tell what the song is about and also the mood of the situation so it is enough if a music director brings in 50% of those emotions in his music. But in the case of BGM, it has to communicate emotions to the extent that even if a person who is hearing the music without watching the visual should be able to understand what kind of situation this music is for. I feel, as of now, the best music directors in India to score brilliant BGM are Illayaraja and A.R.Rahman. I will stop here move to review the album?

Review:

This album has totally 20 tracks, which includes 6-Songs, 1-Theme music, 4- Montage bits, 9- Soundtracks.

First about the songs in brief

?Devadayai Kanden? song sung by Harish Raghavendra was the love anthem of teens in tamilnadu. ?Thottu Thottu? song sung by Harish again is a heart wrenching, emotional and a heavy rhtythm based number. ?Manasu Rendum? song by Shankar mahadevan is a titillating fusion of rock and Arabic music. ?Nenjodu kalandhidu? is a slow, soft and a haunting melody beautifully rendered by Unnikrishnan and Sujatha. ?18 Vayathil? by yuvan himself is a hot, peppy trance number. ?Kadhal Kadhal? song is a situational synthesized melody sung by Vijay Yesudas. The theme music with thundering percussion and a captivating tune played in keyboard made the whole Tamilnadu dance for it.

?Kadhal konden? is a Tamil movie released last year. I can?t forget this movie because story, screenplay, songs, BG score, climax and everything were stunning, haunting and soul stirring and made me restless for one week after watching the movie. I would say, music of Kadhal Konden is the Magnum Opus of Yuvan Shankar raja.

And now I am not going to make in-depth analysis of each and every sound track because to do it I have to explain each and every scene for which the BG is scored. So, I will tell about my experience of hearing this ever first OST album in India.

Even though his BG score style in the movie is inspired from his father Illayaraja (there is nothing wrong in taking inspiration from a classic), the outcome reveals the utmost effort he has taken for which many others music directors are less bothered about. I have to appreciate Selvaraghavan, the director of the movie for extracting such a mind-blowing stuff from Yuvan.

I watched this movie one year before and I bought this album two weeks before, but when I heard the sound tracks of album for the first time, I was able to visualise each and every frame of the movie. Even without watching the visuals the music made me restless as equally as I was one year before when I watched the movie for the first time. In the album cover, they have listed the tracks as 1,2,3 instead of giving a title to each track and so I am going to give name to each track and also list the instruments used in orchestration of these sound tracks

Sound Track No ? Title ? Instruments Used

1 ? Vinoth?s excitement and Vinoth?s mystery ? Violins and flute

9 ? Vinoth?s death ? Violins and Harmony

As the movie itself is a journey through the life of Vinoth and his emotions and feelings like longing, excitement, shock, surprise, fear, anger, love, pathos, happiness etc., each of the sound tracks are very well orchestrated in synch with the visuals to perfectly emote and makes us empathize Vinoth. There is nothing great in scoring a 101-piece orchestra with complex notes; the score value depends on how well the sound emotes. In that sense, the orchestrations are down to earth and simple with soul. The tracks are not instrumental versions of the songs, which is a big plus. Each track has a different tune.

About 4- Montage songs

Usually, I can enjoy the visuals of the song only if I am familiar with the audio of the song before the release of the movie. But these four songs were not released before the release of the movie even then I enjoyed all these four songs the moment I heard with the visuals. It gels well with the visuals and almost comes as a part of BGM. This rarely happens; very few songs are instantly catchy and register in our minds for a long time.

I recommend this album for all those who have seen and liked the movie very much. You will definitely feel on rather than just listen to, these sound tracks.