YMMA 2008

I always have wondered about how a jury after short listing the nominees in each category, picks just one particular nominee as the winner. To me, all those that made it to the final nominations are winners and deserve the award equally. So, to understand how, I decided to give away the award myself for Tamil Film Music in 2008, where I am the only jury. I named it YMMA – Your Musically Music Awards. I picked the nominations. And how I arrived at these final nominations is a separate highly debatable story. But for now, let us just concentrate on my thought process behind picking the final winners from these nominees. To be honest, 1 week after posting the nominations in this blog, I am still not sure about whom should I pick as the final winner and on what basis should I pick.

I also have this big confusion about how a jury picks one movie as the best movie of the year and director of some other movie as the best director. And similarly according to me, while I pick a soundtrack as best of the year, I can’t pick composer of some other soundtrack as the best composer. That is why Best Soundtrack and Composer are clubbed as a single category in YMMA.

If one looks at the list of composers who have won the Best Music Director national award, most of the time, they would have won for the soundtracks that has classical based songs that reflects the culture and tradition of the country(ofcourse A.R.Rahman who has won the maximum so far is an exception here). So, those who think classical music as the best form of music and consider only those who are able to create good classical numbers as the best composers, they would pick ‘Uliyin Oosai’ as the winner.

If I have to go in for a long journey in a car, and if I was left with just these 5 soundtracks CD’s, the first one I would pick to listen is definitely ‘Vaaranam Aayiram’. It is so easy and light on ears, simple breezy melodies with no complex sounds or rhythms. If a jury wants the songs to be simple, instantly catchy and reach to a wide range of audience in today’s times where the attention span of a person on anything is too short, then ‘Vaaranam Aayiram’ soundtrack would be his choice.

If you read carefully, the category is named Best “Soundtrack” which implies that it is music for a movie and not a private music album. A soundtrack is meant to serve a purpose in the movie, take the story forward and ofcourse it should sound good. The music should exactly match with the situations in the script. A good movie soundtrack is one which you want to listen to immediately after watching the movie to relive the moments from the movie. The one soundtrack among the nominees that would fit this description perfectly is ‘Subramaniyapuram’.

Then sometimes a new comer, who shows immense potential to make it big, is chosen as a winner, to encourage him to do more such good work. If a jury decides that as the criteria, then award would easily go to S.S.Kumaran for ‘Poo’.

Also, sometimes award is given to an Unsung, who maintained a high quality work almost throughout his career, but somehow hasn’t got due recognition yet. In that case, award would go to Karthik Raja for composing an eclectic mix of songs with right punch for ‘Chakravyuham’ soundtrack.

To be continued…