An interesting production which I downloaded in a couple of minutes and it contains a nearly two hour documentary video as well as 30 musical tracks. Being an app, it prevents piracy I think, and being interactive and touch enabled, it helps in easy navigation. I am rushing my first impressions after watching only 40 minutes of the documentary:
There is a great passion in each speaker's voice as they describe their adoration of Brinda's music. Ravikiran, Aruna S, Vegavahini, Sowmya, Hariharan (who describes himself as an air conditioner- an order of magnitude bigger than a fan:) ), his mother Alamelu, VV Sundaram, TRS, Neyveli SG, Spencer Venugopal and how I can I leave out TMK.
Venugopal and Ravikiran bring intricate observation, Vegavahini does a historical narrative, NSG and TRS bring good rhetoric. Venugopal is simply brilliant- I feel his articulation and demeanour means India lost a great statesman-actor by his choice of career. He could have been our Sir Lawrence Olivier.
They have two cameramen. One is fond of chairs, everyone is hilariously perched on any of a variety of chairs as they speak a bit rigidly (physically) as they stare at the camera poised at navel level. But who can get an Aruna S down...she does her own bit rather well.
The other camera guy belongs to the wide open spaces and loves to angle the camera at around 15 deg up from the horizon and travel from snow peaks to coniferous forests. (I hate to think they bought stock footage from AVM). Brindamma's BW photos and sketches are superimposed on these scenery. A few shots show silhouettes of rock-cut temples and spires at dusk and dawn with the red sun and bright moon playing hide and seek with tall grass. Brinda is blissfully singing in the background.
There is a deep male voice narrator overlay which is sometimes shockingly deep for anyone.. It alternates with a much more pleasant female narrator.
What have I learnt so far!?
Brinda was a brilliant student of music and learnt a lot from many including Naina Pillai. Her photographic memory was combined with a musical insight that was microscopic. Her voice was Vipanchi, Saraswati's Veena, incarnate. Her voice was a majestically deep resonant presence in the lower octaves and thinned out with razor sharpness in the higher notes to achieve melodic perfection and render the flat notes and the oscillations to perfection with the right volume modulation. Her raga essays had a minimalist, elusive, inimitable quality and left you wonderstruck. Her song renditions had the stamp of the original pAThAntara. As everyone who spoke said, she was a phenomenon like the Niagara Falls. TMK put it well when he said, what could you say except "my goodness gracious!" VV Sundaram said that if you found anything in anyone's music worthwhile, it had to be that it had the influence of Brinda over it. I haven't heard something as big as this ever.
More later. good night!
Buy this app. Or buy the CDS and DVDs. It will be more enjoyable than most Carnatic music experiences. And all the people who have spoken in the video have shown a passion about T Brinda, it is a bit like people who have made the pilgrimage to Badrinath and describe with wonderment still in their eyes about that ethereal experience. The weight of such a tribute is immeasurable.