I find it really surprising that I hardly get to talk about any of this with anyone outside my immediate family, and may be a cousin or two. You'd think where I come from, there can't be enough time to talk about our literary heritage. Music, as a form of bhakti as I previously said rarely gets discussed, you hear music as a way of life and this is such a clichéd expression, however to many the music they talk about encompasses very little and what passes for lyrics these days..asalu sahityam edandi? I read an article about Sri Veturi and how much thought he put in each of his songs, whatever the emotion it had to express, love, devotion, sorrow, he wasn't someone that was bound by this nonsensical "contemporary" genre of lyric writing. Sirivennela Sitarama Sastry and Sri Veturi I guess are the two that saved our face and wrote better songs in the last decade or two.
When I was in primary and secondary school, we had both music and drawing classes in our curriculum, besides the teacher we went to learn music from outside our school hours. As long as music was a mandatory class was when it was full. Once music and drawing became electives, our music class shrunk, I for one was never good at drawing, I couldn't draw a bread slice to show a mould in my biology class, so you can imagine, but that's not why I opted for music. I was actually interested in music, from where came the ragas, how they are numbered, what notes make a raga, such and such was taught and I was totally captivated. At that time when I was taught kondalalo nelakonna, or lambodara, it was a very satisfying learning experience. Ofcourse, I forgot all about ragas, but I do remember the songs, easy to learn and retain something when there is a tune attached to it, that we all know. As a kid I used to aspire to sing at Ravindra Bharathi in front of an audience, but then growing up our dreams change and the ones that remain are the dreams we have for ourselves as grown ups. Now I just immerse myself, be it in Vishnusahasranamam which Smt Subbulakshmi recites with such great clarity, just the perfect diction, even though it isn't song, I look for that sravyam and vaksuddhi in something if it has to register in our mind, in this case Smt. Subbulakshmi just knocks it out of the park and makes Vishnusahasram soothing and invigorating at the same time. I also love to read the work of great telugu poets, Dhurjati and likes, and I must do it more. As of now, I have only read them as part of my curriculum and also listened to them listened to them from Sri Chaganti Koteswara Rao garu who peels each layer, each emotion, each word for us such that they latch onto your mind. Humor, devotion, love, hardships, guilt, remorse each of these words take on such challenging horizons in the hands of great poets Andhra has produced. Once one starts delving into these, it is a literary heaven you can't help but embrace.
My father and I have been singing great tunes since yesterday, reminiscing great lyrics from the 60s era. That was the time that produced some of the best songs in the film industry. Outside the film industry, I can't honestly comment as I do not follow anything. Keertanas yes, I am a sucker for them, can't get enough. To my kind of audience, there is no need to tell you how sweet the song "marugelara, oh raghava" is. For a while when I lived by myself in Tulsa, not a day passed by without me humming the song. Even social movies had great songs in olden days. "pidikili minchani hrudayam lo, kadalini minchina asalu dachenu, vedikalekkenu vaadamu chesenu, tyagame melani bodhalu chesenu, ayina manishi maraledu, aatani badha teeraledu", what a great way to capture human behavior in two lines!! Trust me, this is probably the tip of the iceberg in terms of how good a song can be..on the contrary think of the song "twisting my body from side to side" by Three 6 Mafia, am sure you'll agree when I say, I wish I did not understand the song that well, atleast it would spare me the heart-ache that ensues seeing music fall into such abysmal depths. Let's just tell ourselves that we need bad songs so we know the value of the good ones, actually when we try to put a value to the good ones is when we realise the innate "invaluable" nature of the same!
