Monday, July 7, 2008

Hava Nagila - I

"Hava Nagila" means "Let us Rejoice". It is a very famous song sung by Jewish community as a song of celebration in Hebrew language. The song composition goes close to 100 years back. This piece was used in the film Mozhi, when Prakash Raj dances after coming directly from the shower :)



Very melodious piece!

Can you imagine that this song was presented to us in a folk'ish tune without much reminding of the origin? The movie name is Vikram and the song was none other than the most famous "En Jodi Manja Kuruvi". The lyrics were by Gangai Amaran and he got away with some junk lyrics that had no meaning in any dictionary whatsover!

Illayaraja has given the essence of this Jewish melody integrated seamlessly into our folk style.

My friend often tells me "It was AR Rahman who brought the global sounds to our arena." My answer is Panniyapura Raaja transformed them that much that he gave the essence of foreign subject in a native way. Never I was let feel foreign.

More about Hava Nagila continued..

6 comments:

guna said...

Please check this out:
violin orchestration for hava nagila.. exciting
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BFtv5qe5o3c

Vijay Krishna Narayanan said...

The Harry Belafonte version is the one used in Mozhi. Check out http://youtube.com/watch?v=J_G1jF4Pnh0

Saraks said...

Yes sometimes Raja shows so much genius that it is often invisible to the naked eye.

Emjay said...

Hi Saraks,

Welcome to my blog. I totally agree with what you said.

And I enjoyed reading your blog too:)

ramc said...

Looks like raja got inspired by this hava nagila music and that is reflecting in the starting line of En jodi manja kuruvi. Hwever, the pc is very nice. keep posting sme fine world music pcs like this.

New kamal on the block ;) said...

Ah okay, now I got it. Actually, I do not know its artist or track name. I did listen to de full song during my school days in fm {Classical works by 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm}. Now, karthick {itwofs.com} would add this info to his blog and raise his collar {giggle}.

BTW, Your all other posts are splendid!

always

~~Raaja rules!