Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan wrote: > I am not sure of that. At least in my family, people who do a song > differently are appreciated. As long as people can recognize the > raagam and the overall framework the original composer left, nuances > are appreciated.
Appreciated yes. And at least subconsciously (especially when it is not an amateur but a pro singer) the guy gets compared to how Madurai Mani sang this and how GNB sang that. > > Reminds me of the old K. Balachandar movie - Sindhu Bhairavi. Oh yes, Charles .. definitely see that, and also see the K.Vishwanath movies (Shankarabharanam and such). Extremely well made cinema, the lot - and hinging on some of these themes. > Vicky Vinayakram experimented with the Ghatam (clay pot), his son Son = Selvaganesh > Shivamani does a lot of experimenting, impromptu performances and such. Yes.. I did think of Shakti, that more or less started all this. Didn’t mention it though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti_(band) John McLaughlin / guitar, L.Shankar / violin, Zakir Husain / tabla, Vikku Vinayakram / ghatam. There's also the "Remembering Shakti" tribute group with McLaughlin, Zakir Husain, Selvaganesh (like his dad, also on the Ghatam), U.Srinivas (mandolin) and Shankar Mahadevan (keyboards). Shankar Mahadevan does a lot more tamil movie stuff these days, but still does a lot of fusion, and is carnatic trained. > Guitar Prasanna is not bad at all. He was a regular in my school - as a > performer. Got a lot of us pretty excited. Man, he is damned good. Very easy on the ears. And his Electric Ganesha Land tribute album for Jimi Hendrix is really interesting too. > Besides, Bharata Natyam sees a lot of personal expression - people like > Shobana and Padma Subramaniam have done some weird shit, which I shall > frankly confess to not understanding at all. But then, they brought > some life into a dance form that was becoming heavily middle-class- > brahmanized. There was, of course, the late Chandralekha (http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2009366,00.html) And Protima Gauri Bedi's Nrityagram near Bangalore .. she does Odissi but they do a lot of what you are talking about, interpretations and modernization of classical dance. Though, I must say her stuff struck me as a bit more artsy than I care for. One excellent festival she organized though, about a decade back .. with MS Subbulakshmi and Bhimsen Joshi among others, was top class. If you want much more traditional music and dance (with a certain amount of constant innovation of course, but not all that avant garde) there's Kalakshetra in Madras. srs
