Magic of Raja – A lil bit of this and lil bit of that

Ilayaraja is one of the finest music directors whom I admire most. He surprises me every time, with his great knowledge base and composing ability. In this post I am going to share the great technical intricacies hidden in few of his compositions which have got me goose bumps, when I hear them and try to decipher it.

One such mystery is the song “Malargalil Aadum” from the movie Kalayana Raman sung by S.P.Shailaja. Any common man hearing this song could not stop himself from appreciating the great composition. But for those, who are trained in classical music, it could be a mystery. The song is actually based on the Ragam “Mohanam”. It took several minutes for me to decide whether the Ragam is “Mohanam” or “Sudha saveri”. Something was preventing me to decide on either side. Then I browsed in the net to check out the ragam. In few of the sites/ blogs, it was mentioned as Mohanam and some other sites it was mentioned as Sudha saveri. In some others it was mentioned as Mohanam/Sudha saveri.

Now this brought me more confusion and it was a challenge for my brain cells. One side of my brain tells it is sudha saveri and the other says it is Mohanam. Now at this instance, I decided to notate the song. I found all the swaras are of Mohanam. But I asked myself, why was it difficult for me to identify the Ragam? Why am I not confident? I started analyzing the reason. It is after 1 hour, it struck me, IR has done some magic in this song. And now I reveal the magic. IR has carefully done a Griha beda/Sruthi bedam in the song. For those, who don’t understand the terms, please read the post completely.

The Arohana and the Avarogana of Mohanam is

S R2 G3 P D2 S
S D2 P G3 R2 S

But the Arohana and Avarogana of Sudha saveri is

S R2 M1 P D2 S
S D2 P M1 R2 S

Logic of Griha bedam.

Look at the following figures

If you carefully look at these figures, sudha saveri varies from Mohanam in the third note [G for mohanam and M for Sudha saveri].

But if you think logically, you can bring sudha saveri from Mohanam, if you extra polate and shift the sadjam

If you see the above figure, we can see the S[sadjam] is shifted to P[panchamam] and therefore the subsequent swaras take appropriate position to get the sudha saveri Raga. But the Swaras are still on the Mohanam scale. Now you compare the above figure with the one for sudha saveri and find out how this magic works.

The song starts like this,

Malargalil aadum ilamai pudumaiye

PDGR SDP GRG PD PD

Manadhukkul odum ninaivu inimaye

PDGR SDPGRG PDPD; P

In the song, the chord progressions are such a way, that the Panchamam is heard as sadjam in our ears and thus we conceive the whole composition to be on shudha saveri.

Look out for more such posts on my blog.