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.
By adding honour to world tamil conference, dinamalar launched a website seperately for tamil conference. That is http://www.tamil.dinamalar.com have a look…World Tamil Conference 2010 contains all the buzz details of semmozhi maanadu, which includes videos, audio and the upcoming events