Oscar-winning composer A R Rahman launched the official Commonwealth 2010 Theme Song Swagatham yesterday at a ceremony in Gurgaon. The song has been sung by ARR himself, and at the launch ceremony too ARR sung it to the audience. Sure the song is marked by signature innovative orchestral elements from ARR, starting with the harmonic a cappella-esque start suddenly graduating into the rock song punctuated with Punjabi elements. But when taken as an anthem, Swagatham is missing something somewhere. For an event being hosted by India for the first time, the song doesn’t sound as special as it should. Plus the lyrics don’t seem that appealing either. The arrangement would of course delight any fan, yours truly included, and this song shall form a part of my playlist for days to come, but if I were to make a list of the best anthem/theme songs of ARR, this might not feature in it. And for an event as big as CWG I was sort of expecting to hear a classic from the maestro.
You can listen to the song online here or here. No credits for singers or lyricist are out yet, and I could make out just Rahman and Blaaze on vocals.

Seems like there is lot of legal downloadable free music around. Thermal and a Quarter, the Bangalore based rock outfit is offering one of it’s singles, “Grab me” for free for fans. All you got to do is go to their site and follow the instructions. So grab it, before they take it off.
The song is slightly reminiscent of Pink Floyd, but that isn’t a bad thing at all
Between if you didn’t know, Thermal and a Quarter’s name is derived from the fact that the initial line-up consisted of 3 Malayalis and one quarter Malayali.
Here is the video of the song.
Grab Me by TAAQ

The Germany-based music networking website will be taking an Indian delegation to POPKOMM Music Festival 2010, an integral part of the mostly Europe-dominated Berlin Music Week. This delegation will comprise of regional music labels and an Indian band, which will open the showcases at POPKOMM 2010. This band will be picked through ‘PLAYATPOPKOMM’ – an online contest organized by Music2Deal, India.

Says Dr. Ralf Kleinhenz, Managing Director of Popkomm, “We look forward to welcoming India at Popkomm this September in Berlin.

India’s participation in Popkomm will be its first in a European music trade fair. We are confident that Indian companies will establish important contacts in the European market.”

Music2deal.com Asia Pacific MD Sudhir Shreedharan said, “Popkomm 2010 is a big step for India. It is a golden opportunity to take Indian music to previously unexplored European Markets.” “PLAYATPOPKOMM” will invite registrations from bands/artistes all over India, as also artistes of Indian origin living abroad. A special page created on the website – www.music2deal.com/playatpopkomm will continuously update all the participants and also upload the music by bands that qualify for the final round. This will make sure that bands continue to get promoted even as the contest continues, so even the ones that don’t make it to Popkomm get their music showcased on Music2Deal.com’’ continued Shreedharan.

Explaining the basis on which the candidates will be chosen, Shreedharan said, “It’s not just about good music. It’s about stage presence and the ability to woo the western audience to make Indian music a memorable experience for them. Performing at an event of this magnitude is definitely no easy task and this requires an export-ready, versatile band.’’

This step will definitely strengthen Indo-German cultural relations as well. Says Deepika Unni, (Representative, Berlin Trade Fairs, Indo-German Chamber Of Commerce), “It is very good to hear that there is an Indian delegation visiting POPKOMM. Having a band at the show increases India’s visibility and impact. India has a rich and vibrant music heritage and POPKOMM would be the ideal launching pad.”

Indian recording labels can contact Music2Deal India by sending an e-mail tobusinessatpopkomm@music2deal.com and bands can send in their music to Music2deal India at playatpopkomm@music2deal.com.”

(To view each song, click on song title.)

Noori opened Episode 4 (Form) with a family affair, so to say. The song, Hor Vi Neevan Ho, featured the duo’s mother Noor Zehra playing the Sagar Veena, an instrument developed by her father. The instrument kind of reminded me of the Chitra Veena with its equal-sized gourds, the slider etc, except that Sagar Veena sounds lighter. Coming back to the song however, another gem from the band, a mellow semiclassical-folk song. Karavan followed next with Kaisay Mumkin Hai, a performance way better than their act in Episode 1. Of course, the melancholy was still there and so was the rock flavour, but the violin made all the difference! The tune was also more engaging this time.
Zeb and Haniya, quite unsurprisingly, entered with another entertaining tune. This time they chose a Turkish song, Nazaar Eyle, and the highlight of the song is its beat structure. And the vocals, both Zeb’s western tinge in rendition and the choral harmonies. AND the duel between the instrumentals and the vocals for the last 1.5 minutes! Two outstanding singers were up next, Amanat Ali and Sanam Marvi, with another sufi song called Haq Maujood. From the initial alaap the raag seemed to be Ahir Bhairav. And it is the singers’ brilliance that is the standout factor, the trance-like progression bound to get you hooked. The episode ended with Arif Lohar’s rendition of Mirza Saahibaan. While Lohar’s delivery was energetic enough, in this composition he had the entire orchestra following in at a frenzied pace. But the song sort of went crazy towards the end, the electronic elements a bit of an overkill.
With four more super tracks from Episode 4 to its tally, Coke Studio’s fantastic run in Season 3 continues unabated. Noori and Zeb & Haniya..absolutely out of words!
Music Aloud Rating: 8.5/10
Recommended Tracks: Hor Vi Neevan Ho, Nazaar Eyle, Haq Maujood

On any other time of the year, the Worthy Farm in the village of Pilton, UK is just another dairy farm  and probably the
only sound that you are most likely hear is the mooing of the cows. But for a few days almost every year since the early
70’s this piece of land becomes the Mecca of music lovers and hippies. Yes, this is Glastonbury and we are talking about
the Glastonbury Festival.

Glastonbury Festival or Glasto is the summer festival of music, it is one of the largest cultural festivals in the planet and has been held in Glastonbury for the last 40 years. This year’s edition got over two days back. The biggest attraction this time was supposed to be U2 and Bono is believed to have written a song exclusively for the festival. But an unfortunate accident forced U2 to back off, and they were replaced by Gorillaz. The other headlining acts were Stevie Wonder and Muse. The festival celebrated its 40 birthday this year and Stevie Wonder sang “Happy Birthday” to the festival on stage.

Glastonbury is much more than a showcase of music and festivities. Glastonbury was started as part of the free festival
movement of the 70’s. Even though the festival isn’t free any more, a lion’s share of the proceeds go to aid charities like
Oxfarm. It is interesting to note that such a huge enterprise of human gathering was started majorly by the efforts of a single man and that too in his private property. Micheal Eavis a sailor-turned-milkman owns the Worthy Farm and it was while sneaking into a Led Zeppelin concert with his then to-be-wife, that he got the idea of starting the Glasto Festival. During the earlier days going was tough and the festival was held on a shoe string budget. But slowly it began getting
bigger and bigger, the 2010 festival was reported to have costed 22 million pounds to produce.

Glastonbury is literally a swiss army knife of festivals. There are a lot of things happening there under the name of Glastonbury – there is music, films, dance, partying and even cabaret. It is your garden of earthly delights.The whole farm is divided into different areas and each area has it’s own attractions and performances.There are 4 music stages in Glastonbury. The Pyramid stage is the most important one staging the high profile performances. The stage is built from materials auctioned from a Ministry of Defence sale. The other stage is called “The Other Stage“. There is a stage named in honour of DJ John Peel and the fourth stage is called Acoustic Stage. There is an area called Block 9, a late night party zone where the party lasts all night long.The highest grounds of the farm, overlooking the rest of the festival, is occupied by the Green Field. This area is dedicated to the green movement and holds different sorts of activities to raise awareness about environment, community living etc.The other interesting feature of this festival is the Dance Village, which is basically a stage where disco, house and various other dance music guys perform. Then there is the Kidzfield, a mini recreation park for the kids within the Worthy Farm. There is lot more to Glasto than what I have captured here. It is amazing that so many people, most of them at different levels of inebriation, maintain some sort of order amidst all these revelry. It may be that the spirit of the festival takes you over and captivates you so much that you act like a collective soul perfectly in tandem with the rhythm of the festival. Yes, there have been incidents contradicting this but they are way too minor to be accounted.

While some of the prominent artists to perform at Glastonbory 2010 were Gorillaz, Muse, Shakira, Vampire Weekend and Stevie Wonder, you can check out the HUGE line up on the Glastonbury website. Fortunately this time there were no rains; Glastonbury is infamous for its mud and rain. The farm is a low lying area and heavy rain can turn it into rivers and pools. The sanitation of the festival is also a major challenge. All the filth and dirt generated by the thousands of festival goers has been handled in a responsible manner. Glastonbury also offers an amazing camping experience in the meadows of the Worthy Farm. It is a holistic entertainment experience where everything you do is fun. Glastonbury Festival is a definitive thing to do for a hippie tourist. It is closest to “the summer of love” experience we can get. This is the Mahakumbh of music and performing arts and I hope it goes on forever.

They may not have converted their first Emmy Daytime nomination, but composer brothers Salim and Sulaiman Merchant have found other ways to make India proud, this time on a much bigger level with the duo reportedly having been invited to compose a song for the upcoming FIFA World Cup as part of the official compilation (Thanks to Jayaram, Ankur and Easwar for pointing out that its not the anthem as I thought earlier). Some of the people who have in the past been bestowed this honour include biggies such as Vangelis, Youssou N’Dour and Ricky Martin. Salim-Sulaiman are the first Indians to achieve this feat. The duo will also have the opportunity of performing at the opening and closing ceremonies of the World Cup. They would be performing alongside R&B artist Loyisa Bala and Kenyan singer Eric Waninaner. The official anthem for this year’s World Cup is Canada-based Somalian hip hop artist K’Naan’s Wavin’ Flag.

Salim-Sulaiman have had an experience at composing anthem-like songs with Chak De India. And they have been having a good run in the recent past. But all their scores have been Indian, and I am yet to hear anything on the world music front from them. Just hope that they churn out a memorable composition for the World Cup, not ending up Indianizing/Bollywoodizing the whole thing! Below is the video of the 2002 World Cup anthem composed by Vangelis, my favourite composition for any FIFA World Cup yet.

The Grandslam season is back! French Open is already underway and in less than a month Wimbledon will kick off. And this time in its efforts to making the Wimbledon experience a novel one, the authorities have appointed an official resident poet for Wimbledon in association with the Poetry Trust. Matt Harvey, the British performance poet, will come out with a poem on each of the Championship capturing every facet of the tournament. The verses will be available online and in podcasts, apart from being being recited to spectators at the All England Club. Harvey will also be interacting with fans via his blog posted on the Wimbledon site, and twitter.
In his quintessential manner, the humorist responded thus to his being appointed Official Championship Poet 2010 – “It’s an honour, and I’m acutely conscious it’s the only time I’ll come first in anything at Wimbledon, unless you count the queue for strawberries.” The first poem has already been published. Its called Grandest of Slams. You can listen to Matt Harvey recite the poem on the official podcast here. The lyrics can be read here as well. So there are more reasons than one to look forward to this year’s Wimbledon!

Happened to listen to Rahman’s second anthem in two days, this time Jai Jai Garvi Gujarat. Quite late I know to be listening to a song that came out on May 1. Even now its thanks to my cousin Unni and friend Emmanuel that I came to know of this one. The song was released as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Gujarat state. The lyrics, originally by Kavi Narmad, have reportedly been slightly modified by Dilip Rawal, Ankit Trivedi, Sairam Dave and Chiragh Tripathi. There is also a Hindi version of the song written by Prasoon Joshi. The video has been directed by Bharat Bala.
Apart from the fact that the two anthems have been made for two parts of the country, there was a general contrast in the feel brought about in the two songs. While the Tamil Classical Conference anthem was sort of imposing in its arrangement with the ambient feel et al, Rahman has brought a very quaint feel in Jai Jai.. Starting with just an acoustic guitar in the background, the arrangement slowly builds up as it progresses. The folksy loop on the flute is a beauty! Keerti Sagathia has of course done a wonderful job of delivering the song. On the whole, a very heart-warming anthem. Thanks to Rahman being involved in composing, this song will already have won lots of fans outside the Gujarati community! Below is the video of the song. And here is the official download link of the mp3.

The anthem for the World Classical Tamil Conference, set to be held next month in Coimbatore, was launched yesterday. The theme has been directed by Gautam Menon, set to tune by A R Rahman and penned by Karunanidhi, a dream combo for any music lover. If that was not enough, the song features some of the biggest names from the Tamil film music, Carnatic music and Sufi music worlds. Here is a small sample I was able to discern from the set – TMS, P Susheela, Hariharan, Aruna Sairam, Bombay Jayashree, Srinivas, Nityasree Mahadevan, Sowmya, Harini, Karthik, Chinmayee, Blaaze, Benny Dayal and Shruti Hassan. Other surprise elements are music director Yuvan Shankar Raja singing for Rahman, and GV Prakash returning to sing for Rahman first time since his debut as composer. Since no good quality video is available on the net as yet, I was not able to get a good idea of Gautam Menon’s work, but on the musical front Rahman has once again ensured a treat. Owing to the patriotic theme perhaps, there are faint traces of Maa Tujhe Salaam in places (some alaaps also reminded me of Omanappenne due to the raga similarity), but on the whole the song is quintessential Rahman with its intriguing layers of instrumentation and mounting addiction on multiple listens. The only complaint that i have is of the usage of rap. Somehow I can’t picture rap fitting in with Classical Tamil! But of course, Rahman knows best!
Below is the best quality video that is currently available on youtube.

One of the neatest violin mashups I have watched in recent times! Ace violinist Paul Dateh recently came out with a mashup of four songs from iTunes Top 40 list – Lady Gaga’s Telephone, Ke$ha’s Blah Blah Blah, Rihanna’s Rude Boy and Usher’s OMG. The video has been making waves on the viral charts for the past couple of days,a look at the video will tell you why. If not for the violin and the vocals you will surely be captivated by Dateh’s video editing skills! Enjoy Dateh’s one-man show then.