It is a confluence of who's who in western and Indian classical music arena. Yes, the legendary Paul Simon's recent album ‘So Beautiful Or So What' (2008) is a collaboration with percussion maestro Karaikkudi Mani for the lovely song Dazzling Blue . The lyric runs like P.B. Shelley tucked with T.S. Eliot! The lines but the CAT scan's eye sees what the heart's concealing; nowadays when everything is known….. you and I were born beneath a star of dazzling blue.. are simple yet charming.
Romanticism meets pragmatism and erupts into a fountain of poesy. The music translates this dichotomy into rhythm and song so beautiful.
The percussion just fits the bill. The move of the lyric sung so soulfully by Paul Simon rocks you like a lullaby under the canopy of a moonlit night. It's not hard rock, there is soothing touch and the blend of Mani's excellent mridangam beat with the rest of the orchestra is perfect. The very Indian ‘konnakol' (syllabic utterance) gives the song an extra dimension like the “CAT scan”! Can blue dazzle? you could well question. No it is not the sea metaphor as most of us are bound to pre-suppose going by the title of the song. It is the twinkling star that dazzles like a diamond in the sky looking down at a pair of destined lovers. It is a matter of pride that the mridangam is able to stabilise the rhythm patterns within its parameters and produce a seamless merger of two streams of music.
And this is Paul Simon's second collaboration with an Indian maestro after five decades; the first being with Pandit Ravi Shankar in the Sixties.
While most of us know the percussion wizard Karaikkudi Mani who came into limelight at a tender age of seven and still goes strong, Simon, a winner of a dozen Grammy Awards (one was a Lifetime Achievement award) and an Oscar nominee (2002) is a miracle musician-composer. This American-born rock star sparkled like a dazzling star in the musical firmament re-emerging whenever the skies were clear. He is one of the few musicians who withstood time and change in the western world to turn into a legend in his lifetime.
