Charulatha Mani uses tremolo technique from opera tradition in Thug Life song

Charulatha Mani bridges genres with the tremolo technique

Last week, when the world heard the songs of Mani Ratnam’s Thug Life at the audio launch, they found an AR Rahman album that catered to different moods all at once — among others, there was the rousing ‘Vinveli nayaka’ by Shruti Haasan, the lilting ‘Mutha mazhai’ in Chinmayi’s voice, and Charulatha Mani’s soothing-yearning-lament ‘Anju vanna poove’, which featured the tremolo technique drawn from the opera tradition.

‘Anju vanna’ also turned out to be an educative experience for the audience, many of whom wondered at the ‘special effects’ in the song. Charulatha Mani, Carnatic singer who also dabbles in films, and who holds a doctorate in ‘Hybridising Carnatic Music and Early Opera’ from Australia, spoke about how the powerful lyrics nudged her to try the tremolo in some passages and how it met the music composer’s approval.

Charulatha is a familiar face to followers of both Carnatic and film music. She’s always been this bridge between the two with her Isai Payanam series, where she makes classical music more approachable to those who don’t know it, using film music as a guide of sorts. Inversely, this also helps purists see the innate classical influence on film music, sometimes unexpectedly in pulsating numbers. She’s rendered some too — more famously, ‘Uchi mandaila’ and ‘Chillax’, both for music director Vijay Antony.

“When I read Karthik Netha’s lyrics, I knew it was a lullaby, but the words ‘Kaatha vaaren’ felt like a mother’s reassurance. There was also a tinge of pain and helplessness. The lines ‘Pinju veral enge, konjum kural enge’ (Where are the tiny fingers, where is that affectionate voice), tempted me to try the tremolo, which dates back to the Early Opera period and was the top ornamentation of that time. Rahman sir said that it sounded effective, and so we used it for the poignant lines,” Charulatha says. The tremolo lends a trembling effect to the voice. “It is the ornament that connects to the soul,” adds Charulatha. “In a strange way, this showed me yet again that what we learn stays with us, and resurfaces when we least expect it to.”

And then the researcher in Charulatha takes over. “The tremolo was considered important to bring emotion back to music after the spiritual bent of the Renaissance Era. And my PhD was on the 17th Century Italian Opera, when Claudio Monteverdi composed the first opera L’Orfeo in 1607, in the city of Mantua.”

Why did someone tuned to Carnatic and film music seek the opera? Charulatha credits her husband Karthik Balasubramaniam with this. “I entered a world of music I had not even been familiar with, outside the Carnatic realm and Western pop. He introduced me to Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, coloratura singing in Bellini and Donizetti.” And then, she introduced him to the earliest opera ever, with the work of Claudio Monteverdi when she started her PhD. “That is an interesting time in music. There was a lot of cross-cultural pollination between the East and the West. Oriental sounds traversed through Venice, which was seen as a hub of multi-culturalism. They were privy to sounds we are still discovering through their scores that are heavily ornamented. When you look at a bar, a measure of time in music, they’ve gone up to the 1/64th bar. Their passaggio is similar to the sangathis and brighas. And, it’s all been written down, note to note.”

When doing her PhD, Charulatha delved deeper into opera music. “My professors were experts in early opera, and I saw the commonalities with our music. I learnt Italian and, under their guidance, travelled to Mantua, where Monteverdi lived and worked. ‘La musica meets Saraswati’ was a fusion piece in my production Monteverdi Reimagined.