Shanmugapriya

I was watching a friends classical dance show a few weeks back. It had some excellent music which they had recorded in a studio in India specially for the show. When I came across this piece, (which i recorded on my treo)

1. I really liked it, instantly.
2. It sounded very similar to something i had heard...

My friend pointed out to me it was nothing but the awesome shanmugapriya ragam which was the answer to both my questions.

Of course the songs came tumbling down in my mind...first one was Vilayada idhu nerama which i had heard growing up, by M. Santhanam. Even though i wasn't a big carnatic music fan, i always had a special attachment to this song, at that time i did not know it was shanmugapriya.

The second song that came to mind was the classic from Thillana Mohanambal

You can see that the similarity is so much, that you can just sing the songs interspersed like this...Vilayada Idhu Nerama, Malai azhaga indha silai azhaga endru...

So i started walking around with recording on my treo and showing it to people, a couple immediately thought of Salangai oli

Others pointed other beauties like Kannukkul nooru nilavu and Gopika Vasantham both have a classical tilt to them and are such great songs, or surprising ones like Tham thana thamthana or Ooru vittu which hadn't crossed my mind at all.

I can list a lot more songs here but will stop, as a simple Google search will yield them for you.

This is the 56th melakartha ragam and was sung in the devotion of lord Shanmuga. In English scale starting in C, the notes go like this C D Eb F# G Ab Bb

I will discuss in another post about Melakartha ragams and carnatic music. But for now, just bask in the beauty of Shanmugapriya and next time you listen to something, take a step back and think why do you like it so much? There may be a link after all...

I also wonder if i can write a program to generate songs in Shanmugapriya automatically for me! And if i do, will i like all of them? Something to ponder on...