The moment we drew up a rough itinerary of our upcoming Europe vacation & shared it with my sister, her immediate reply was that we were almost following the route of Vazhithunaye song from Dragon! We hadn’t seen that song till then and, to our surprise, we realized that except for the Tissot Peak Walk at Glacier 3000, we were indeed going to visit all the other places!
With a very long gap between the initial planning days and the actual trip, we kept turning only to Vazhithunaye & PoovukkuL oLindhurukkum from Jeans & had forgotten the rest of the movie songs featuring the places.
Now, back from the trip, I watched Yedho Yedho onru from Enakku 20 Unakku 18 and I realized that we have covered everything in that too!
Haven’t movie songs always been our guide to finding some amazing places to see?
But this post isn’t about the location, but about the changing times and the music.
Take Enakku 20 Unakku 18, the heroine & hero meet each other by chance during a train journey, don’t share their contact details & then end up searching for each other. Even after they meet, they are hesitant to express their feelings and let the time pass by. That’s when yedho yedho onru is shown.
Moving on to Dragon, a studious guy starts failing in all the subjects and becomes a rowdy simply because the girl chose a guy like that over him. He then goes on to become a fraud on top of this and even gets engaged to a girl without revealing the truth and that’s when the song vazhithunaye happens. I obviously couldn’t stand watching a movie like that beyond the first few minutes & only read the synopsis.
Similar locations – two different songs – one a long, slow, romantic song full of longing, with the interludes matching the vibe (blame my kids for me using this word instead of something like atmosphere or ambience) of the place, another a short, peppy, fun-filled song with interludes matching the pace of life today full of thoughtless partying & selfies. Do you realize that the duration of the song itself shows how impatient we as a generation have become?
Take the lyrics and the way they are sung. There is no way that nowadays someone is going to pause long enough to sing uyireyyyyyy idhayammmmm as it is sung in yedho yedho onru. It’s another fact that even 20 years ago, it was already too slow for the times.
In Vazhithunaye, it’s a continuous stream of words matching the pace with which they are travelling – oor paarkkum nalla nalla thaLangaLellaam unai kooTTikonDu kaikortthukkoNDu!
Coming to the musical aspect, one might expect a core Carnatic-based music for the first theme & a western-kind of music for the other. Ironically, here’s where the surprise factor kicks in!
Though yedho yedho onru has some Charukesi in it matching the melancholic aching feel of the song, it still has a lot of western touches. Oh that interlude!
Would you imagine a Reetigowlai with fast beats for visuals featuring the lead pair strolling outside Moulin Rouge?! Well that’s Vazhithunaye for you! The joyous Reetiwgowlai matching the energy level of the young lovers happily exploring some of the beautiful sights of Europe!
The contrasting moods created by the pathos of Charukesi and the verve of Reetigowlai showcasing two different kinds of love during two different periods of time but set in the same place! Isn’t that the power of music! Wow!
P.S.: I came to know only today that Vazhithunaye is composed by the son of Noel James, whose name we used to see in the credits of so many of A R Rahman’s albums!