Kanakaangi - I

In our last post, we had finsihed with a Raga, whose swarasthaanam looks like "111001011100". The interesting thing to note in this is the 3 subsequent 1's appearing twice in the raga. If you try to play this scale by just traversing across the notes in your keyboard, you will feel like closing both of your ears. Simple, it will not be melodious as against playing "101101011001".

You can analyze why "111001011100" doesn't appeal as much as "101101011001" in several perspectives. If you ask a Carnatic pundit, he/she might simply say: "இரண்டு முறை விவாதி ஸ்வரம் வந்தா இப்படி தான் இருக்கும்". (Because of Vivadhi Swaras")

If you ask a layman like me, I will say "it is all because of the three 1's coming subsequently". If you look at the problem psychologically, our ears are trained with a sequence of melody notes and subconciously it starts expecting a pattern of notes. The notes that doesn't go well with each other becomes dissonnant note. Sa Ri1 Ga3, Sa Ri2 Ga3 and Sa Ri2 Ga2 notes sequence are well expected by our ears, whereas Sa Ri1 Ga1 makes a jarring sound!! That's why a tune that is considered melodious in one culture might not appeal mass in other culture.

Anyways, coming back to "111001011100". The Raga that has this swarasthaanam is the 1st Melakartha Raga - Kanakaangi. There cannot be a better challenge to a film music composer than to come up with a song set to this scale. According to various sources that I verified, Illayaraja is the only composer in Tamil who has given us a song set to the scale of Kanakaangi. The song is none other than "Mogam Enum Theeyil" from Sindhu Bhairavi.

Stay tuned for the next post on how Raaja has handled this delicate Raga.