Raavanan (Tamil)-Music Review-A.R.Rahman

As promised earlier, here is a quick look at the Thamizh counterpart of Manirathnam's Raavan, Raavanan.

Its always tricky to score music for multilingual flicks (without considering dubbing here) especially if the balance has to be struck between a North Indian language and a South Indian language. If the tunes are composed keeping in mind, say, the film in Hindi, it may end up sounding alien to a South Indian listener.

1. Veera suffers from the aforementioned. It sounded much better in the Hindi soundtrack.

2. 'Behne De' is 'Usure Poguthey". Its a double whammy for Karthik as he handles the song brilliantly in both versions. Vairamuthu's lyrics are good. "Indha olagatthil idhu onnum pudhusilla, Onnu rendu thappi poghum ozhukkathula, Vidhi solli vazhi pottaan manusapulla, vidhivilakkillaadha vidhiyum illa". Nice!

3. Kodu Potta sounded better in Thamizh than the Hindi 'Thok do Khilli'. A rebellious song with words like "சோத்துல பங்கு கேட்டா, எலையப் போடு! சொத்துல பங்கு கேட்டா, தலையப் போடு!", still gives me a heard before feel.

4. Shankar Mahadevan and Anuradha Sriram sing Kaattu Chirukki (Ranjha Ranjha). Anuradha is irritatingly shrill at places. I still don't like it much.

5. KaLvare KaLvare (Khili re)sung by Shreya Ghosal is mellifluous and still my pick of this album with typical Rahman style arrangements. Shreya continues with her rollicking form in Thamizh with another surefire hit here.

6. Kedaakkari: I found it quite cacophonic even when I heard it in Hindi. This one obviously cannot be any better. The lyrics are also quite mundane.

Overall, though ARR has managed to balance most of the tracks between Hindi and Thamizh decently, as I mentioned in my Hindi Review, the album itself is, personally, quite a let down (especially after VTV) from whatever the Mani-ARR combo have offered before (I am not even talking about the music in Mani's films before ARR stepped in).