A quick note to non-(South) Indian readers: The first part of this blog is a little topical and you may not relate to it. I have tried to provide an analogy to relate better, but I hope you can relate to the second part regardless of where you are from.
On my recent trip to India, there was one song that was played repeatedly in all the TV channels. It's a pretty nice, melodious number from one of the recent Tamil movies named Pasanga (Boys). It's been ages since I've seen any of the new movies, but the song stuck in my head. I think the song is about two young folks falling in love. Unlike many of the Indian film songs, thankfully the actors don't tend to sing and dance the number here and it is rendered more as a background number.
I forgot about it after I left.
Bad Pronunciation
Few months later, I was sampling through all the songs that I had gotten from India on my way to the office. Two songs stood out. One was a song called Maalai Neram (Evening Time) from a film called Ayirathil Oruvan (One in a thousand) and the other one, the song "Oru Vetkam Varudhe" (I am getting shy) - the one I mentioned earlier.
Maalai Neram (Evening Time) by Andrea Jeremiah in Ayirathil Oruvan
Oru Vetkam Varudhe (I feel shy) by Shreya Ghoshal in Pasanga
The songs stood out to me because they had a pleasing melody and because they both had unique voices (compared to others in the genre). As I started listening a bit more closely, I was all the more captivated by the second one and slowly started disliking the first. The reason - the singer of the first song, while having an excellent voice, butchered the diction. Her pronunciation was way off and it constantly distracted me from trying to enjoy the song itself, especially since I knew how it was supposed to be pronounced. On the other hand, the second singer rendered the song perfectly - with barely any noticeable variation in diction.
I know this sounds nitpicky. After all, music is supposed to be beyond language, right? Why not just forget about diction and enjoy the music itself? While agree to this philosophy and endorse it, I feel it is fine as long as you do not know the language. Knowing the language and understanding the meaning, I feel adds a few more layers of depth that you do not get with just the music.
For example, if you are a non-English speaker "Hotel California" by Eagles may be pleasing to you at first because of the guitar riffs at the beginning and the end as well as how the song progresses. For an English speaker, the song adds an extra depth not just because of the lyrics, but also because of the diction. Imagine the same song sung in a Karaoke fashion by Apu from Simpsons! The song goes on to add even more depth if you were a child of the mid '70s.
The irony in this case is that Andrea Jeremiah is a native Tamil speaker, while Shreya Ghoshal is not!
The trend of bringing non-native singers to sing in film songs especially because of their unique voice in Tamil is a new trend started a few years ago by A R Rahman (the 'Jai Ho' guy). While this is great and it added a new depth to the songs, not many have taken this task to heart. Many of the famous singers (Udit Narayan and Adnan Sami being the biggest of the culprits) have sung the song pretty much however they want with scant regard to the intricacies of the language in which it is sung, which I feel is a shame, as it robs the listener off a perception level. This cannot be just brushed aside as something that they do not know or are familiar with. There are others (notably Shreya Ghoshal and S P Balasubramaniyam) who have made a sincere effort to sing the song with as much accuracy as possible, trying to preserve the language of the song in the process. This, to me, makes them stand apart from others.
Good presentation
So far, whatever I've said may border along a rant. While it may be true, there are a number of other places where the same issue can have a more tangible impact. I will expand on two.
The first obvious one is when you travel to another country. While people may be curious about a tourist and may try to be helpful, it only goes so far. The curiosity will go away very quickly if the tourist does not respect the local culture. While some allowance may be given for a short while, it is not sustainable. On the other hand, if you attempt to understand and respect the others' culture even to a small degree and try to speak their language, it can go a long way in building trust (Avatar movie has this theme). I have experienced this in practice when I have worked with my China colleagues. While I don't understand the culture or speak the language, they become quite enthusiastic even if I say a "Hello" or a "Thank you" in their language. It has also helped 'break the ice' at times during conversations.
The second one is a little bit more subtle and one I can bet many of us do not do. It's about presenting our work better. As an IT professional, I end up creating a lot of documentation, typically in PowerPoint, Excel, or Word. For a long time, my focus has been on getting the documentation done (since it's done at the end of a project typically and I can't wait to get a break!) and not necessarily in making it pretty. However, over the last few years, I have come to realize that the style of presentation can have a subtle but significant impact on both your audience as well as on you.
Especially for Microsoft Office documents, there are some simple steps that you can take to make the documentation go from average to impressive. It takes probably a few hours at first to get this, but as time goes on, it becomes second nature. I have tried to explain this in a presentation that I put in Slideshare sometime back.
To me the content of the presentation is like the unique voice a singer brings to a song. It's what she was paid for. No one is going to complain as long as the singer does not screw up badly and sing the song with her special take on it.
The style of presentation (layout, typography, and use of visuals) is the pronunciation of the singer. It reflects how well the singer understands the target language (how relevant the graphics and typography are to the content) and how much effort she has put in trying to know the language better. When this caring shows up on your presentation, the presentation on the whole becomes well-crafted. There are fewer distractions in the document that takes the reader's mind away from the content and the reader will have the intangible feeling that it is appealing - and that could make a big difference in how well your idea is accepted, and is well worth the effort.
Can you think of a few other scenarios where such additional 'style' on top of 'substance' makes a noticeable intangible impact? If so, feel free to post a comment.
3 comments:
Sathya,
Aren't you getting a bit verbose:-)?
Two things struck me from this post:
1. Shankarabharanam ( Watch Somayajulu's exposition of why diction matters in music)
2. Edward Tufte on Info Visualisation and Presentation( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/index )
Now, you can connect the dots, hopefully :-)
That's true! Normally when I create a deck, I re-read it a few times to tighten the text so that it's crisp - nowadays most of my posts are written while on train or late night. So, I don't really get the mood to do the reviews.
Will try to make it more crisp. I started on another verbose post, may be that's my chance :)
Have Tufte's book. Agree with him. That's what I have attempted in the deck. Hopefully it came across.
I used to shriek every time my brother turns on ANY of udit narayan's tamizh song. From the "parvalle", and the way he killed "kuzhuvalilley muthu vanthalo"...its just eerie.
and god knows why renowned Tamizh-native music directors such as Rahman are still using him.
anyway, i think Khailash Kher is trying his best.
can brush him up, dump udit and rope other brilliant singers in. there are always fresh faces if they are looking for a change in the voices.
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