Can I rave about Susheela Raman, please?

You're probably wondering Susheela who? And I would have to, a week ago. Until I watched this lovely movie called Touch of Pink, and I heard strains of her work as part of the movie soundtrack. And I was so sold.

Her seductive voice stayed with me much after the movie. I stalked her on the Internet, but because of the very esoteric nature of her work (fusion music with Carnatic as the somewhat dominant theme), finding and downloading her numbers off the Web were that much more difficult.

But I'm glad I stayed the course, because the result was very rewarding. I downloaded her album Salt Rain, but I'm trying to sample her work one number at a time. Till now, I've heard Nagumomu Galeni (which is somewhat annoyingly titled Nagumomo) and O Rama. Over and over again for the past 3 days. And I still don't seem to be able to get enough of it. Both of these numbers are improvised, "fusioned" covers of Carnatic music icon Thyagaraja's works. And how.

She's been able to bring this brilliant twist to the original works, and whilst that might roil the purists, I sure wasn't complaining. My only beef was that, possibly because of her western upbringing, she tended to blatantly mispronounce and aspirate, even, some Telugu words. But I'm happy to look the other way as I let her music just waft soulfully across my being. Or something. My only regret is that I don't understand the Telugu that is sung. The sheer lyrical beauty of the sounds demands understanding. Having lived in Hyderabad, India for more than 10 years, I understand and speak the colloquial language reasonably well, but my lack of formal training in the language certainly doesn't help in understanding 19th century classical Telugu. Maybe some day...

And oh, Mira Nair's The Namesake also features her work as part of the soundtrack (a very cute offbeat ditty titled Yeh Mera Deewanapan Hai).