‘Thirukkural Isaithamizh,' a musical compilation of 330 couplets from Tirukkural, featuring voices of nearly 60 singers will be launched a few days ahead of the World Tamil Classical conference.
The compilation is being brought out by Tamil Maiyam. Announcing this to mediapersons here on Wednesday, Tamil Maiyam founder Jegath Gaspar Raj said the 330 couplets selected by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil (CICT) have been made into 50 songs.
The songs will be set to tune in different genres of music, including folk, classical, Carnatic, Western, light melody and Hindustani. Fr. Jegath Gaspar Raj, violinist Embar Kannan, singers Srinivas, O.S.Arun, Arimalam Padmanabhan, T.L.Maharajan and Kanniks Kannikeswaran have composed music.
Nellai Jesuraj, who scored music for ‘Mozart Meets India,' an album brought out some time ago by Tamil Maiyam, will handle the orchestra. Chief Minister M.Karunanidhi's interpretations of the couplets will be presented in the form of a booklet along with the CDs.
Singers, including Sudha Ragunathan, Nithyasree Mahadevan, Aruna Sairam, Bombay Jayashri, O.S.Arun, Sowmya, Sikkil Gurucharan, Harish Ragavendra, Karthik, Srinivas, Unni Menon, Tippu, Harini and Anuradha Sriram have sung along with many others.
“It is an attempt to popularise Tirukkural, a work done in the classical period. We have democratised the dynamics of music by including different schools of music,” Fr.Jegath Gaspar Raj said. Observing that film songs have been dominating the music field, he said the initiative sought to create a quality content for schools and colleges to use it for their cultural works.
Works to include interpretations in English, other south Indian languages, Hindi, Oriya and Marathi will begin in the second week of next month, he said.
CICT professor K.Ramasamy said the classical status was significant for Tamil as it paved the way for a lot of funding for research activities. On choosing the 330 couplets, he said they were picked based on a range of criteria – couplets that do not contain religious or communal references, that are easy to set to tune and that have social messages.
CICT Director (Additional charge) S.Mohan said the album would revive the Tamil music and its significance. Singer Sudha Ragunathan, who is also the brand ambassador of ‘Thirukkural Isaithamizh,' said the compilation has enhanced the beauty of couplets. “Musical interludes have been handled with so much care and rhythms fall in place in perfect sync.” Nearly Rs.60 lakh has been spent on the making of the album. The album will be released a couple of days ahead of the World Classical Tamil Conference.
Prof.Arimalam Padmanabhan and a few singers including Sikkil Gurucharan, Tippu, Harini and Harish Raghavendra were present.
