Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."

Richard Dawkins


"Leon Lederman, the physicist and Nobel laureate, once half-jokingly remarked that the real goal of physics was to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt. In that spirit, Dawkins offered up his own T-shirt slogan for the ongoing evolution revolution:
Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators."

"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."

Napoleon Bonaparte

The 3 Laws of Prediction by Arthur C. Clark
  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Scrolling RSS News Ticker

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Carnatic thillu mullu


Jus came across a divine article here on kutcheri sterotypes; worthy of Russell Peters himself!!
Here's some samples:

Sing-along Subbalakshmi: Usually a maami who sings at dasara kolus with a lisp and an appalaathu maavu kural (a voice similar to that achieved by coating your throat with papad batter): "Tharatha thaama dhaana, bheda danda thathura.." Insistently sings along with every song in the kacheri to prove that she knows them all. Is also the most glared and hissed at phenomenon in a kacheri, apart from Giggling Gayatri and gang.

Giggling Gayatri: Usually seen huddled in a corner with a bunch of cousins and friends, passing comments about everyone and sniggering throughout the concert. Neighbours who object to the noise are instantly made a part of the giggle club and soon a whole section of the audience is giggling uncontrollably.

The Paradise Flycatcher: The old biddy in the front row, usually an invitee, who enthusiastically plucks imaginary insects out of the air in time to the music. Screams bhale, and sabhaash at random moments in an alapana, and throws the musician completely off sync by loudly clapping out an aadi taalam to a mishra chaapu krithi. The musicians, too polite to fling their silver chombus full of dubious liquid at the rasika’s head, usually screw their eyes tightly shut and sing louder.

The Devaranama/Meera Bhajan destroyer: The sort that is clearly convinced of the superiority of music over poetry, and the irrelevance of the actual words being sung. Hence if Meera sang:"Maii thwo kirithara ge ranku raaaajee", Krishna would still appear, albeit scraching his nails on a blackboard. This artist is also convinced that all devarnamas are composed using the two imaginary kannada words "Hothle and Hidhlu" and will sing an entire purandara dasa kriti using them.

Asalooru Ambis/ambujams - indian born foreign settled boys/girls hovering around popular concert programs (especially Aruna, Sudha, Unni etal) with mineral water in hands


Varaaha Vaidyanathan: For the uninitiated, this is the delicate art of piggyface making. Especially prominent while executing delicate sangathis during a raga: "Thu dhu rin na nu....uuiiium", or during a long phrase in a Thyagaraja Krithi involving words like "munu ju joochuchumu".

Today's video: Maha Ganapathim; a nice jam/remix/fusion version from Morning Raaga. Singer: Bombay Jayashree.

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)