25 Favourite Tamil Songs from 2007

12. Kireedom Theme

Movie: Kireedom
Composer: G.V.Prakash Kumar

If you are one who listens to Hollywood scores, the orchestration and arrangements of this instrumental has nothing new to offer. And my reason for choosing this song is not its orchestration but its haunting violin theme. The song packages this main violin theme cleverly with snare rich percussive arrangements to start with and then turns soothing and calming towards the end, when the main theme is left afloat on violin, strings, cello and flute one after the other.

25 Favourite Tamil Songs from 2007

9. Vizhiyil Un Vizhiyil

Movie: Kireedom
Composer: G.V.Prakash
Singer: Shwetha, Sonu Nigam
Lyrics: Na.Muthukumar

It is again a very simple melody which gets it flow right. Getting a melodic phrase is very easy but developing the musical phrase into a streamlined melody without any drastic twists and turns could be a daunting task for a composer. And only when you have such fragmented musical phrases to be put into a single song, one need to go for extra ornamentation, otherwise just an apt rhythm, the melody and good rendition of the singers is enough to make the right impact, as it is in this song. But, I have to admit that the Veena pieces in the interludes do add a serene flavour to the song.

Kireedom Soundtrack

G.V.Prakash Kumar is definitely a promising newcomer with a big hit ‘Veyil’ and soon-to-become-hit ‘Ooram Po’ soundtracks to his credits. Not often a newcomer like him gets chance to compose music for movies with big stars. It is a chance for the composer and his music to reach a wider audience. In such movies, it is more important to deliver hit music rather than quality music. There is not much scope for you to innovate or experiment in such projects. But inspite of all these constraints, the one who strikes a right balance of everything to delivery a hit and quality music is the real master. Has GVP done it? Well, to some extent.

I think every composer who scores for a movie with big stars is forced to compose a hero introduction song with a lead music like that of ‘Oruvan Oruvan Muthalaali’. Not even a single composer had succeeded is repeating that Rahman magic and GVP joins the list. The 'Vilayadu' song is simply boring expect for Sivamani’s percussive interludes.

‘Vizhiyil Un Vizhiyil’ is a breezy romantic melody with beautiful Veena interludes. Sonu Nigam is lot better than Udit in Tamil pronunciation. Not just her voice, but even the singing style and improvisations of Swetha, reminds us of her mother Sujatha. ‘Akkam Pakkam’ is GVP’s version of ‘Vaseegara’. Sadhana Sargam excels with her expressions in this song. The starting sitar strings of ‘Kanner thuliye’ instantly reminds us the sitar bit from ‘Evano Oruvan’ song and the format and orchestration reminds us ‘Poongatrilae’. I am not against GVP following Rahman in getting overall sound quality (obviously, no contemporary composer can avoid Rahman’s influence and hence Rahman sound in his music) but using the same instruments and following same kind of orchestration is not what we expect. Infact, the starting notes of charanam is same as that of ‘Poongatrilae’ song. The first line of ‘Kanavellam’ is exactly the same as that of ‘Yaar theeyai yerippatho’ from ‘Ooram Po’. I think it is too early for a composer to repeat himself. But otherwise, it is a very nice situational yet catchy number with Karthik and Jeyachandran singing with right feel.

The theme music which we heard in the trailer is a well orchestrated piece. I am happy that they included this piece in the soundtrack. The violin piece is really haunting. The piece suddenly shifts to some action cue and comes back to the main theme in a beautiful way and especially it haunts towards the end when the theme plays on its own on cello, violin and string section without any percussions in the background.

GVP should soon find his own style and sound and it seems that he gets inspired by all contemporary composers. But inspite of all these influences, Kireedom soundtrack is definitely worth a listen.