Degradation of poeple's tastes in film music ?

I had been to Chennai (Madras) over the weekend. I have been trying to procure the CD of a movie titled Sringaram - The Dance of Love ( As the name indicates, the movie is based on the Bharatnatyam system of dance) since a while. The music for this movie has been composed by Violin virtuoso Shri Lalgudi G Jayaraman. It is his first attempt at composing music for films and I read that he won the National Award for Best composer for this movie. That strengthened my resolve to get a copy of this CD. My first bet was Landmark, a wonderful book shop chain which also stocks CDs (picked up a few books on music - The Spiritual Heritage of St. Thyagaraja, The Madras Quartet by Indira Menon and Great masters of Hindustani Music by Mohan Nadkarni - a music critic for Times of India for many decades.). The registry at their help desk indicated that they were not aware that a movie of this name existed. I then decided to try my luck at music shops in T Nagar, the cultural hub of Chennai. (The hordes shopping out there seem to indicate that people of Chennai are suffering from Obsessive Compulsive shopping Disorder.) Getting back to my CD hunt, went to a few shops but the reply was standard, "we don't have it the CD you are trying to procure". One of the shop keepers explained that this CD didn't sell and they were forced to return all the copies to Carnatica (the producers of this CD.) It is rather pitiable that a movie with such wonderful music by one of the best Carnatic music violinists has been rejected by the masses.(The songs have been rendered by good singers and instrumentalists like Sowmya, Bombay jayashree, Lalgudi and his children, Injikudi brothers - nadaswaram.) Is it that the quality of film music has degraded to such an extent that people can't appreciate good music? Or is it that usage of classical music in films is no longer appreciated? (Taj Mahal a Hindi film released a couple of years back with music by Naushad met with a similar fate.) I hope this trend is again a passing phase and the general masses in India are able to revive their interest in film music based on classical music. It is deplorable that when the rest of the world is appreciating Indian classical music, most people in our country are turning a deaf ear to such wonderful music.

Comments

A Symphony In Green......... said…
Please give the link in the blog itself from where you'd downloaded the concerts/videos.
October 16, 2007 at 7:07 AM
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