Weekend Rendezvous with the Maestro

My weekend was made with Renault winning the Constructors championship (Am a Renault fan!!!, since 1994, when the great Ayrton Senna drove a Williams Renault). A LIVE musical night with Maestro Ilayaraja was an ideal end to a great weekend.

The Program was quite entertaining to a packed house. An extraordinary feature that came to light yesterday was Maestro's yet another hidden treasure, his sense of humor. A brief summary of the events I witnessed include:

1. Traditional Maestro prayer song.. Janani ... Janani and this time his sons joined him in chorus as well.

2. SPB, Hariharan, Chitra, Shreya Ghosal, Sadhna, Mano, Uma Ramanan, Vijay Yesudas, Karthik, Jeychandran, Swarnalatha singing to maestro's past and present tunes. The highlight being Shreya's tamil pronunciation, which the crowd took an exception.. She sang Kaatril Enthan Geetham from Johny, with great flair.. but instead of "theduthey" she sang "thodutho" in the verse kaaanatha onrai theduthey. Maestro saved her from disgrace by stating Pattukottai Kalyanasundaram's verse, which goes as "Thirudan paarthu thirinthaa vittal.. thirittai Ozhikka Mudiyathu" and likewise he asked us to be patient for non-tamil speaking singers to learn from their mistakes.

3. The Man of the Match was indeed Maestro's "Naan thedum sevvanthi Poo idhu" which was asked for a "R E P E A T T U" in Chandramukhi style. The show host Parthipan, mentioned that the Alaap sung by Maestro Ilayaraja in the beginning of the song will take one to extreme happiness, the moment after which one will like to experience death as he has reached the pinnacle of happiness in life.

4. Padmashree "Ulaga Naayagan" Kamalhassan marked his attendance with his characteristic tone "V A NA K K A M". This time he was wife not to confuse listeners with his tamil literary verses.. but he mentioned that his presence there is like a squirrel contributing mud to building a bridge in Ramayana. Kamal is always there with his similies.

Here comes the moment.. Maestro did allow Kamal to escape without pestering him to sing.. but as he was leaving the stage.. Maestro sang a song on Kamal beginning with an embarrassing "....K U D I K A A R A ....K U D I K A A R A....K U D I K A A R A". Kamal was taken aback including all of us.. Maestro's creativity came to fore as he completed a short song and of course completing the first word as "P A R A M A ....K U D I K A A R A",Kamal's native town.

5. May be a pet revenge time for Maestro against his own (Yuvan) for he latter's inclination towards more western touch in his compositions.. he asked him to sing "Chinna Kannan azhakkiran" Yuvan managed pretty well, after which Maestro asked him,"Why didn't you sing like your normal way and he mimicked yuvan's way of singing.. which had us all in splits. Yuvan responded as the pith wasn't ok for him to sing like he liked.. hence the pitch was changed instantly and he sang like himself.

Did you know all these:

1. The song Sundari kannal oru seithi while being recorded in Mumbai.. the orchestra there, which happens to be the one of the famous R.D.Burman's gave a standing ovation during the middle of the song as they were totally mesmerized.

2. Maestro has written several Venpas (excuse me for my tamil).. and has helped Kavignar Vaali it seems to write a few.

3. Maestro apart from being a genius in musical compositions, lyric writing, book-authoring, knowledged in musical extremes like Carnatic, western and folk, is also a good artist it seems and we all found that he has a great sense of humor too.

I would have liked the following to have happened:

1. Kamal singing "pottu vaittha kaadhal thittam" with Drums Sivamani there to take care of percussion

2. SPB singing "Adiye, nilluna nikkathey dee" with Sivamani tere again to show what drumming means in the song begining..

3. For guitar fans like me, songs like Ilaya Nila and Yen iniya Pon nilavey would have made our night sleepless with fond memories.

Overall a truly amazing experience altogether..