Songs and scissors

It was one bleak and black day years ago when the Gramaphone Company of India acquired rights to Tamil cine songs. I am flabbergasted at the apparent deafness of ears these people seem to possess. I was listening to the seminal "mayakkamaa kalakkamaa" on a P.B.Srinivas collection and am again feeling totally frustrated at the HUUUGE chops made to the song. The interlude music gets knocked off, and the antataa (stanzas), whose lines were originally sung twice, are rudely scissored to leave only one rendition available. And the cut sounds so horrible that one can only shed silent tears for P.B.Srinivas and Kannadasan and Viswanathan Ramamoorthy. This is a totally nonsensical treatment of music and particularly music which has azquired such an aura over time.

Of course, our dear music company is not partial. It performs such happy scissoring to plenty of other songs. It does not allow us to enjoy the marvellous prelude music to "onDru sernda anbu maarumaa", listenevrs may never get to listen and appreciate the beautiful use of violins in the prelude of "uDalukku uyir kaaval"... the examples are aplenty. I do not understand why these companies have to revert to such editing? It is not as though they are filling up the CD with plenty of songs. I do not mind getting a couple of songs less - but DONT sacrifice the musical beauty of the song.

Oh well.. I guess its easier to just buy the VCD of the movie and get the music from there - with lower quality perhaps, but at least complete.