I wonder why they call themselves `The Wandering Souls'?
For someone so close to perfection, they may actually be very near
their goals! :-)
This is just a small report in appreciation of the TWS `Rahmania'
concert held in Pune last week.

Saturday, 10 Feb, 10 pm, it was amazing to see such a huge excited
crowd clutching their Rs. 100+ tickets and waiting to enter the
auditorium to watch the concert. The concert began with a bang with
a short introductory piece of `Oruvan Oruvan Mudulali' (Muthu?),
sadly that was the only Tamil element in the whole of the concert.

Each song was introduced with a small anecdote or story or incident
which was highly enlightening. For example, not many would have
known about a song ARR helped his father compose when he was just 7!

On the whole, the singers did an excellent job, and it was
fascinating to see originally multi multi-track `ARR' compositions
being rendered very close to perfection by a live orchestra
consisting of just 3 keyboards, 1 Flute, 1 set of Drums, 1 Dholak, 1
Tabla, I think that's it.

The nuances and mostly hidden and ignored aspects were well brought
out, for example there was this tall guy in greenish lemon colored
shirt in one corner who joined for chorus and sang in a different
pitch, something that is easily skipped not only while rendering,
but also while listening to ARR compositions. Songs kept on coming
with one after another, for 3 hours and one was at a loss of words
at the marvel this group was displaying.

There were a few misses too, for example the bass guitar, of so much
importance in ARR compositions was barely audible, in the song
Snehidane (Chupke Se), the off-beat beats that occur during Sultan
Khan's piece could not be heard, Roobaroo would have sounded better
without an electric guitar. But a group performing within the limits
of the available equipment and sound system and with members
performing live and having only 2 hands each could only do as much I
guess, no complaints.

There were `Once more' requests from the cheerful crowd at multiple
occasions which the group had to concede to, for popular and fast
tracks like `Loose Control', `O Hundum Suniyo Re (Saathiya)' etc. I
wonder what would have happened to the crowd had they been treated
to something like `Secret of Success (Boys)'. Also in the wish-list
is the Chinese redention of the 'Warriors of Heaven and Earth' song,
for which the group can probably catch one of the Chinese students
studying in Pune.

The group certainly has a great responsibility of introducing the
non-tamil public to ARRs genius which has been so far been hidden
from them, hopefully they will be able to accomplish this in the
near future.

I am already waiting for their next concert.


Best Regards,
Archit
Pune



--- In arrahmanfans@yahoogroups.com, "Dinesh Vaidya"
<dnshvaidya@...> wrote:
>
> When THE WANDERING SOULS invited our GURUji, A R Rahman, to attend
> the programmes in Pune, this is what he replied to us in his
> usual "short and meaningful" way...........
>
> "Good luck to the guys…… Hope they retain the SOUL of the music……
God
> Bless !".
> .......