If you are here for the first time, please read this post.
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Every time I hear the name A R Rahman, my mind usually goes to the peppy ‘Urvasi’, the joyful ‘Petta Rap’, the romantic ‘Ennavale’, the enthusiastic ‘Vande Maatharam’ or sometimes the emotional ‘Mustafa’. Every album had one such song that I had in my mind as the identity of the album. As a fan of Tamil cinematic universe, I always went behind the popular ones in most of the albums. One such album is Sangamam in which I thought the heroic ‘Mazhaithuli’ was the best of the lot until I recently unearthed this magic ‘Sowkiyama Kanne’.
When the movie Sangamam released, I was very little that I didn’t even remember the existence of this song(what a shame?!). Thankfully, youtube’s autoplay landed me in this song which was performed in a ARR concert. There was something in this song that held me in a loop. I had this misconception that ARR was always about western music in his filmography. Like the umpteen times that he surprised me before, he did again with this Carnatic classical.
Before even Nithyashree asks us “Sowkiyama kanne!”(are you doing good darling?), ARR makes us ‘Sowkiyam’(well and good) with his orchestration of chorus and mridangam. The amazement lived throughout the song with ARR’s trademark control over percussion. I was clinging back to this song after hearing it for the first time. It was playing in a loop both in my mind and my speakers. I was playing this song in my in-ear headphones, over-the-ear headphones, my speakers and tv too. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Every time Nithyashree went “En Kaatril swasam illai”, I went breathless. Even today, I get excited when this song comes in my play queue.
This made me revisit the collaborations of ARR and Nithyashree like ‘Kannodu Kanbodhellam’, ‘Minsara kanna’ but this time with a more curious mindset. I ended up wanting more classicals from ARR. Probably, I am still not aware of his greater works. Whatsoever, my love for him seems to grow more and more everyday. Because, music is pure love!
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About Loges
Loges is an author who's published a collection of short stories in Tamizh. He loves to travel and is a photographer as well. Music is Loges' companion during his travel, and at work.
Loges writes in Tamizh and in English on his blog . Thank you, Loges for sharing your favourite memory of a Rahman song.
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