Within a couple of weeks, the 'Tanglish' or 'Tamglish' (a new breed of English loosely tagged as Tamil-English) song 'Why this Kolaveri' reportedly garnered more than two million (22,506,705 till 14 Dec. 2011, 16.46 IST) viewings on popular view website Youtube since the day its promotional video was uploaded on the unfathomable world wide web. The song has gone viral (The Times of India, 21 Nov. 2011 ) with inflammable rapidity through social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut etc. among the urban tech-savvy young generations and then, it has metamorphosed into recording and storage devices for circulation at lightning speed to play in the audio-system or the stereo-system at each and every nook and corner across home and abroad as well.
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| Dhanush |
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"Kolaveri" is recorded for an under production movie '3' by Aishwarya R. Dhanush, wife of National award winning Tamil actor Dhanush who has written and sung this song. This video of this song is nothing but the footage from the studio recording of 'the making of the song' (not even 'making of the film'). It was first unofficially uploaded on the Youtube and after sensing out rising rage among internet-savvy and convent trained English-speakers young generation, an official version was posted where five persons ( Dhanush, his wife Aishwarya, Kamal Hassan's daughter Shruti Hassan, twenty-one year old debutant music director Anirudh Ravichander and an unknown person) are seen engaged in recording of the song in a dim light studio. In the studio, the obvious absence of band of musicians is worth noticing. Thus, the singer's voice is warped, twisted and pitched with a heavy use of the synthesizer. The very charisma lies in the catchy, prosaic but surfaced poignant expressions. Thanks to the blatancy of charmless and repetitive tune and words of the lyric.
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| Dhanush and Shruti Hassan |
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Stylistically analysing, 'Kolaveri' has altogether 171 words (including repeated ones) wherein the word 'kolaveri' repeatedly and undesirably appears 44 times. If categorised linguistically, it has 127 and 26 words from English and Tamil languages respectively. Moreover, there are some notes (pa..paa) pitched against the rhythm of the song. The opening line apparently lacks its subsequent complementary line that figures in every commonplace lyric. Frankly speaking, the song does not betray the aesthetic exuberance at all. Hence, this can be well argued that the song- in presence of a pinch of transitory feeling of failure in love- is able to create a sensation in the shallow and unseasoned hearts that have less concern for the permanence of the beauty of a piece of art and that of love.
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| Anirudh Ramchander and Dhanush |
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The Tamil term 'kolaveri' is loosely translated in English as 'murderous ruse' (Times of India, 21 Nov), and 'jaanleva' (one of my Tamil friends translates in Hindi). Sudhish Kamat writes in the Hindu on 28 Nov. 2011 that 'Kolaveri' has folk-ish tune, sung in broken English with a thick local flavour. He credits the song with quirkiness and improvised lyrics with a tendency to go away from the strict formality of English language. In that case, the song has not to do much with a valuable lyricism, but an experimentation with language. He admits, " Dhanush has indeed made broken English cool among some urban pockets but others laugh at it, rather than with it." So much so that Danush has proclaimed that the song is nothing but 'an absolute nonsense' (The Hindustan Times, 26 Nov.2011). A renowned lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar criticizes the song in sharp words, "...Tune ordinary, singing substandard, words an insult to sensibility". Thus, the euphoric success and media-hype for 'kolaveri' song will last till trees shed all their leaves this autumn.
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| Anirudh Ravichander and Aishwarya R. Danush |
But the reception of 'Kolaveri' has been reportedly 'overwhelming' since many celebrities including megastar Amitabh Bachchan (terming it original and catchy) have showered accolades, praised it and congratulated Dhanush. This cannot be seen beyond the ambit of intrapolitics of eulogizing and promoting the clan members since the son and daughters of filmstars are engaged with the project. However, the audience have gone lunatic with the grammatically streamlined English language with the twisting inflections and moulded pronunciations to the Dravidian linguistic features (girl-u, white-u, etc.). In short, instead of enhancing beauty of poetic musicality, they make the song funny and shallow in meaning. Let the euphoria die and wait till 'kolaveri' becomes a trite and cliché. Already several caricatures have appeared ridiculously in different versions (female, exam, children, Nevaan's-Sonu Nigam's son, etc.). Thus, the multiplications do not bring popularity to 'kolaveri', but a moment of surface fun to audience.
Moral: 'Kolaveri' will vanish like morning dew!
