it might have been too much too take by the end of the show (after all it did go on for over 4 hours) but when it was good it was terrific. last night mukul, his parents, mom, sonal and me had gone to watch a group called ‘keep alive’ pay tribute to the music of madan mohan. to be honest, after the non stop talent shows on tv i was expecting the rejects from them to be the singers- in other words- to be not so great. but these three women and two guys were fantastic.
even more that the fact that they were actually always in key, were able to pick out the emotion from the lyrics and were able to throw their voices in the complex configurations that lata mangeshkar could, i was taken by the nuanced way in which they had listened to the original music. delicacies of movement and nuances of feeling that were hidden on record were revealed to me as i saw the singers make them come alive in front of me.
the songs were interspersed with details and trivia of madan mohans life making him out to be the kind of tragic hero we always would like our poets to be in black and white nostaligia. his family was in the audience and were felicitated for surviving him (i guess). unfortunately because our central character of the day had to be portrayed as the most profoundly unhappy person, many of the songs chosen to be performed by him were these mournful ghazals. beautiful though they all were after a while they did begin to morph into one another. the stand outs of the day were the girl in green who blew the electricity off whenever she came on stage, and baiyan na dharo from dastak which is a beautiful song no matter who may hum it.
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