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The Holi(not holy) picture in Tamil Murasu and Hindusthan Times is creating few blogposts in the Indian Blogosphere. I’m annoyed not by the picture but such blog posts.

Given the state of affairs of the Indian Media, I’m positive the photographer or the journalist hasn’t taken the permission to publish this picture. Maybe I’m wrong. If only they have taken the permission of the guys on the photograph, what the heck guys, what’s wrong with posting those pictures? No one morphed few photographs to make this collage. It seems real, it’s happening. Agreed, it’s an invasion of privacy and that is a cause of concern but none of these blogposts seem to raise that as an issue. If that’s the concern, I take it. Rather if someone is passing moral judgements on what should and what should not appear on newspapers, are they not trying to do the same moral policing which happened in Chennai clubs, few months back.

Remember the issue with Shankar’s Boys when the whole Tamilnadu took a holy dip with a rush to save the boys’ virginity. This one seems like a similar issue involving excessive amounts of vigorous hypocrisy. Who’s having the last laugh now ?

I was a huge fan of Suresh Peters. Right from his first album pop album Minnal to this third one, I was one of the very few million fans for Tamil Pop. Infact I still remember the folk rap in his second album. Though Malgudi Shuba’s Vaalparai Vattapaarai was trying to revive Tamil pop music, it was back to square one after that. SPB Charan and Devan did an album called Kamban Oru Kanniley and except for the title number others seemed like tamil film music. They were certainly good but not standing up as pop album attempt. Couple of albums from Shalini and Anuradha Sriram’s Madras Girl got famous at their time of release but never got to stand the test of time. Until today, Suresh Peters’ Minnal is probably the best effort in Tamil pop scene.

As the Tamil Pop industry started to churn out mediocre attempts, one after another, I thought they might rather stop making this nonsense called Tamil Pop itself. Before my thought was even committed, Tamil Pop ceased to exist. Over the years, few albums have released and none have been hits by themselves. Even Yuvan’s effort was little noticed(how many knew that Yuvan actually made 2 pop albums ?).

Now a bunch of guys, naming their band as Encore have come out with a Tamil pop album Thee. They sent across an email with a pointer to their music samples. Listening even to the first one, I’ve to say I’m thoroughly impressed. At first it seemed like an email to get some blog bandwidth but they sure rock. Their title number, Thee has some amazing strings and some superb rhythm programming(notice the aygiri nandhini tune jammed in-between). The music sounded very professional and nothing close to being an amateur troupe. I just glanced down to read the credits and saw Percussion – Sivamani, Bass – Keith Peters. Both, masters in their own areas. And the label of release was Saregama. The singers list had Devan, Malgudi Suba and Chinmayi. Seems like they got the big fishes in the industry for their album. Apart from their title track Thee, I also liked Dhinam Dhinam and Chinmayi’s Thaai Polavae(can’t sing at a lower pitch than this).

Though one has to listen the entire album before jumping to a conclusion, I loved majority of their samples and am looking forward to the rest. Encore formed by Bharat / Jagdhish / Karthik / Krishna and Katz are trying to revive Tamil Pop. I hope and wish their attempts gets noticed and reaches out to the masses.

As a note of suggestion, Tamil pop isn’t Tamil cinema and hence you don’t need variety. You don’t need to wait for a commercial hit to make an art film. You don’t need 5 songs, 3 fights and 2 foreign locations. The Tamil pop could be based on a theme or just concoction of various themes. Essentially, it needn’t be as Urvasi Urvasi followed by Ennavale Adi Ennavaley followed by Errani Kurrani Gopala followed by Kathalikkum Pennin and so on. Make songs that you want to listen and we will listen. I promise.

A R Rahman is performing in the Eastern Michigan University on April 15th . Radha Krish mailed me that he had performed at Stanford, some weeks back.

Why is Rahman so inclined towards universities these days ? Charity ?? Good music lovers ?? I’m clueless.