Interesting thing I found....

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Atithee
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by Atithee »

Who can tell me more about this artist and her style of music? I can, of course, search the web but someone here must be a fan and know more. Thanks in advance.

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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by Rajiv »

Atithee wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:30 am Who can tell me more about this artist and her style of music? I can, of course, search the web
@Atithee, my Dad is in Hkg at this moment and he knows a thing or two about Indian Classical music and upon checking with him, Papa informed this style of music is based on "The Bols and steps of Bharat Natyam".

Trust this helps to your query :D
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

Yes, Aruna Sairam is a terrific singer. The above clip has gone viral, but this type of singing is actually not that rare. Like Rajiv said, it is connected to bharatanatyam pieces. Many karnatic singers who sing for Baratanatyam are called upon to do such pieces fairly routinely, and some of the dance choreographers are experts at setting them up too. Like fitting combinations of 3*4 and 6*3 and all that into a timing stretch of 64 beats, and stuff like that. I am actually classically trained and have done some concerts and all (but never had time to focus on singing). In most cases the singers would just have the dance teacher sit by the side and do it when these pieces come up in the middle of song. But I have sung similar pieces for bharatanatyam arangetrams (debut) shows and it is a fantastic and time-consuming experience.

Here Arunaji did a fabulous job, but she had a bit more leeway in things, as there was no dancer. The singer can't make mistakes if there is a dancer. The experienced dancers can adjust even if the singer messes up a bit on the mouthed words, as long as the beat (tALam) is not broken, which is normally not an issue for good Karnatic singers. But it is nerve-racking to do it when a young debut dancer is dancing, because any mistake would throw the dancer off and would make her a dead duck on stage - which is why the singers mostly just let the dance teacher do such pieces.

I am glad that the above clip (and whatsapp "viralness") brought out one more thing about the depth India has in such cultural items to which a lot of the people in our country have not been exposed much. In my opinion, there should be classes on such things in our schools. I am talking about 10 or 20 hours of instruction to kids in school (not anything extensive) that would just tell them the basics of our classical music, dance, and impart a basic set of the theories behind it. The theories are extensive, but a few hours of that with some listening pieces would help a lot more people enjoy so much more of the music and dance India has. We never do such things. We teach so many useless things that the British said should be taught 150 years ago.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

If you liked the above piece, check this out - what two super-talented kids from the Dakshina kannada in Karnataka do. See the whole 10 minutes. It is mind-blowing.

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Note that the poetry in samskRtam by Oothukkad Venkita Kavi from Tamil Nadu (a legendary 18th century composer who should be much more known than he is) was itself set for dance, with the words and the rhythms set in the lines themselves. Then the "vaaythari" (mouthed lines for beat) are added on top, and that makes the "thillana" - which is a song set for dance. It is amazing deftness that the two kids show here, and it is a testament to their guru who is sitting in the middle and getting them going. Ah, the Indian traditions!

If you want to have fun, try doing 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 with your mouth quickly, every time between the kids bring their hand down on their thighs (actually they do a finger count every 4 beat and a hand count every 8 beat, as you can see). Just keep mouthing 1234-1234-1234-1234. You will see by the time they do a full tALam of 32 or 64 beats, how many different combinations of words and numbers happen. In some places, you will hear your 1-2-3-4 matching the mrudangam beat. If you start counting right from the start, you will hear the mrudangam matching you at 0:19 when the mrudangam/violin starts. Later on, you will find it tough to mouth the numbers but the kids hands are perfectly falling on time even when they are singing something totally different. It is all magical, but like I said, not rare in Karnatic music.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

^^^ If the kids blew your mind, imagine a dancer acting as young Krishna, doing the dance on the imagined serpent kALIya in a lake, and killing it on stage :)

By the way, I think the short piece above from Arunaji may also be from the same incredible thillana by Oothukkad. I need to check it. Arunaji has sung it many times and her rendition of this thillana is what motivated Kuldip Pai to set that up for the kids, if I am not mistaken.

Finally, the mouthed words "tAkiDa, tamkida, tadhimi, tajhaNu", etc are not random things. Each letter correspond to specific footwork by the dancer and specific sounds to be made by the percussionist on mrudangam. It is elaborate. Much of it is in line with the treatise by Sage Bharata (NatyaSastra) from some 2000 years ago!
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by Rajiv »

jayakris wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:53 pm ^^^ If the kids blew your mind, imagine a dancer acting as young Krishna, doing the dance on the imagined serpent kALIya in a lake, and killing it on stage :)

By the way, I think the short piece above from Arunaji may also be from the same incredible thillana by Oothukkad. I need to check it.
Yes Jay you are correct and this rendition is based on "Krishna Leela" and the name of the song is "Kalinga Nardhana Tillana" sung in Carnatic music style.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

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Thanks for the education, Jay and Rajiv. This is an amazing forum!
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

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Jay, this rekindles the debate of what is a sport.

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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

^^ Well, if it involves mechanical action of any part of the body (arm/finger muscles, eye movements, etc) that affects the success rate, I can consider it sports. Some (or many) of the online games would perhaps qualify. I don't play any online games, so I don't know how many of them would qualify.

Chess.is.not.a.sport :)
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

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^^ Chess involves moving pieces, right? As do playing cards—playing at your turn, etc.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

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^^^ I said,"mechanical action of any part of the body (arm/finger muscles, eye movements, etc) that affects the success rate". I don't think moving the chess pieces qualify for "affecting the success rate", even in rapid chess. There may be card games that actually could qualify as sports, but I don't know which ones.

Basically a computer without any physical accessories of a human being can play chess and only the program's intelligence matters (as far as I know; I don't know chess well). You don't even need chess pieces to play it and determine the win/loss rate and ranking of the players. Just a computer screen and a voice command would do, and even the muscle movements of the vocal chords do not affect the success rate to any noticeable extent. That is unlike say kabaddi, where even those vocal muscles' operational efficiency matters a bit.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

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Jay, I’ve seen robots hit golf shots. It’s not hard to see why a robot couldn’t play golf. Does that disqualify golf from being a sport?

On a related note that might help this discussion or not, the deep blue IBM computer beat the human Jeopardy tv show GOATS or at least did quite well. Buzzer timing is highly critical to success rate. Does the quiz show Jeopardy qualify as a sport?
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by Sin Hombre »

So as per Jay, online speed chess is a sport since it requires good mouse skills?
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

Atithee wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 1:11 am Jay, I’ve seen robots hit golf shots. It’s not hard to see why a robot couldn’t play golf. Does that disqualify golf from being a sport?
Just that the robots can do it, does not make any sports a non-sport. In fact, if you need a robot (with mechanical/motion abilities) and not just a computer, then it is a sport. If not, then it is not a sport. That was the point in my example of chess computers. It can be a phone with no mechanical abilities but a bluetooth connection to a chess square that lights up (no chess pieces needed) to be a computer opponent, and a human with a phone and voice input can play it. If Vishawanathan Anand was using such a phone device against computer and human opponents while totally paralyzed neck down, he would have become #1 just the same way as he was once.
On a related note that might help this discussion or not, the deep blue IBM computer beat the human Jeopardy tv show GOATS or at least did quite well. Buzzer timing is highly critical to success rate. Does the quiz show Jeopardy qualify as a sport?
Is buzzer timing HIGHLY critical in jeopardy at all levels? I would have to disagree. At the highest level of Jeopardy with the GOATs (where every opponent knows all the answers, or say 75 percent of the answers?), buzzer timing and reflexes may become highly critical, but to get to that level, knowledge is what counts and not reflexes. If that were not the case, I would be willing to call it a sport though!

You see, in fact, my definition would make a lot of games sports. It is an extremely relaxed definition. Even card games might become sports. Musical chairs. Dance competitions. Drums/percussion competitions. Cooking competitions. They could all become sports. But still, there is ONE game that simply cannot become sports whatever argument we try. That is the game with no (or the very least amount of) qualification to be a sport. That is Chess. It is a game, and not a sport.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

Sin Hombre wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 5:37 am So as per Jay, online speed chess is a sport since it requires good mouse skills?
If you can show that mouse skills is the main reason (or heck, even a 20% reason) for wins and losses at all levels of competition, I could agree. But I don't think that is the case. I will lose to anybody in the world in an online game of chess, even to somebody who can't move his fingers for a mouse and needs to type with his foot on a keyboard. I am just not intelligent enough for chess... Or maybe I never learned to use whatever brains I have, for playing that game. No amount of mouse skills would help me beat anybody.
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