Birth of the "Bathroom Singers"

The first part of this post, that pretty much put my touch and go with music since childhood is here..

Covid hit us all, some more than others. Everyone had to stay at home for months. Travel was simply not possible. There were no random mini get togethers with high school classmates. 

A few of these classmates, who all went to BITS Pilani, had been part of a Zoom get together for their college group. They suggested doing a get together for our school group along similar lines.

The idea was to not just have everyone come and introduce themselves and their family, but to make a talent show inbetween the intros. This was supposed to be a 2 hour event with close to 70/100 classmates expecting to show up. It ended up being a 4 hour thing where people just stayed up late and enjoyed the time spent. 

The talent show part was to have people post either a recorded video of them singing, playing an instrument, dance, etc.  It just so happened that one of my friends sent me a message asking me to sing something in Spanish as he had remembered my Spanish singing days.

Given we were all at home and I was mostly confined to an unheated guest bedroom in the corner of the house, I gave it a shot. Recorded a Spanish song and had to lip sync it live. The sync did not come out great when there were 70 people on zoom. But here is the original recording and a screenshot..

It is very much possible that my friends liked it more for the Spanish, than my actualy singing quality, but I did get a lot of encouragement to keep singing. It is also the first time I heard that multiple classmates were on this platform called Smule. 

A few months earlier, another friend of mine told me about Smule and how she was randomly singing with strangers. Her hubby warned me not to go anywhere near it! I did not pay much attention to this or even check out Smule at that time. (I wasn't into singing!)

After this high school get together, the folks who were all interested in singing, decided to start a separate group so we don't spam the rest of the folks with our music interest. 

Bathroom Singers was born.. We even have a fancy group logo, thanks to the Lyril girl! 

Not sure if we showed that kind of attitude in our singing, but we have all come a long way since the end of February when we had that event. We did a lot of singing. Many of us joined Smule and went through the learning curve of getting the basics of using this platform, just the very basics! Most of us were singing again after decades!

It was all Spanish songs the first month. It was not easy to sing on video. You make one mistake and you start again. I would give each of these a few tries. Good thing was I was singing from memorized lyrics. Could sing it with eyes closed!

Started sharing the links with friends and family. Got a few interesting responses!

My friends were happy to listen, but suggested that I slowly start to migrate from Spain via north India towards south India to join them on some of the songs. Went from Spanish to Italian to Hindi to Telugu to Tamil.. 

First attempt to sing Tamil was with my classmate and she picked a song that needed mimicry skills. She did an amazing job on this one!

Very soon I learned that putting out invites for others to sing along, was harder than joining someone elses invites, where you are just filling up the blanks! It was also not easy to sing on time and at tempo. You miss a beat, you are toast! 

Also realized my repertoire of Tamil Songs was confined to what I listened to as a kid. What my aunts made me listen to when they were growing up. Was missing a few chapters in the middle from the college and grad student years. Had simply not kept up with much of the 90's music.  There was also another gap in the early 2000's music when most of my time was spent changing diapers. At least now I knew that there was some stuff that I had to listen to first, before trying to sing and get some context on the songs. 

As soon as the Spanish song clips hit India, my parents were in panic mode or at least that is what I saw in their responses. A ballroom dancing Tambram is an oxymoron, an anachronism, an abomination in the eyes of many.. Such a thing doesn't get acknowledged by ballroom dancers or Tambrams and that chapter of my life was buried under layers and layers of god knows what! A resurgence of Spanish on my lips was giving folks nightmares! So I would get nice requests to start singing Tamil (or even Hindi !!) songs, and if I did want to sing again, why not Carnatic music?  South Indian classical music was now more accessible, what with Zoom teachers being everywhere!

"Sundaram, indha cinema paatellam vittutu konjam Saami paata paaden da! Punniamaavadhu varum!", was mentioned many times by many folks. (Sundar, why don't you leave all these movie songs and start singing devotional hymns, at least you will get some good karma?!) 

I was singing(reciting) devotional stuff all the time anyways. The movie songs were just something to entertain myself and have some fun. Being happy and thereby making people around me happy is also good karma, no?! That was my answer to folks who wanted only devotional or pure classical music. That said, I did want to learn that properly as well,  just did not know where to start! It also makes sense to learn classical as that is makes movie songs easier to sing!

In the meantime, the Bathroom singers got busy and after four months, only 4 of the 9 people were singing regularly. The rest of the entire group(almost 50) were sincerely cheering for whoever was still singing. To this day, they do! This group has encouraged me to keep singing more than anyone else!

Some of my classmates are really awesome singers! They just don't have the time. I don't have the natural talent that these kids showed in high school. Maybe I had some and never realized it, or maybe there was none. Bottomline was that in order to sound half decent, I had to practice, a lot!

My wife and kids went back to "can you please shut up?",  but realized after two weeks that I wasn't going to.

Jr. found it amusing the way I was going about it. The litlte one did not want to have anything to do with my singing. So before posting stuff, I would get it reviewed with my MIL, (and San and Jr.) if they were available and willing.

It turned out that the MIL is an avid movie goer, music afficianado and a great critic. She would reject my post on the first note. She gave me more feedback on where I was off on the tone, the scale, the tempo, etc. She would ask me to go listen to the original to see why my attempt was so far off from the original. She taught me to listen to the background score and sing with it in unison. A lot of little things.

She has been my best critic and supporter. She saw how sincere I was, in trying to put out a decent invite and would give me a pass/fail. It was mostly a "barely pass with a D" type review but feedback is what helps one improve. So I would look forward to the D- instead of the F and rejoice!

My friend RK then told me "your voice will actually suit all the old TMS era songs. Try that!" and sent me a link to some of the songs. I simply would not join any songs from SPB or KJY because they were simply out of my range or so I thought. Also if I tried anything like that my wife would promptly say "Can you please not sing that song and spoil it for me? I am trying to save some good memories in my head!". It would be brutal.

Folks who read this blog, know that I am made of sterner stuff and don't give up on things that easily. Kept going, and RK was right. TMS, PBS, AM Rajah songs did sound better, partly because I knew all the lyrics by heart and had heard those songs a lot more than some of the recent (?!) Ilayaraja songs. My family was also happy that I was singing clean songs with no double meaning lyrics. These old songs were from a time where love didn't have so much physicality or oomph in the music. They could practically pass for devotional songs! 

Made some new Smule friends who were singing similar genre of songs. That was great because the bathroom singers were almost silent. Needed the practice! 

After singing 150 or so songs on Smule over 150 or so days, I tried to sing a TMS oldie. Once you sing a few songs on Smule, it automatically recommends you other songs to sing! The song,  "Vasantha mullai pole" from the movie Sarangadharaa came out in 1958! It is one of my favorites and is almost a classical music song as were most songs in the 50's. 

Here is a link to the original from the movie..

Sang it four five times and MIL rejected them all. Even my best supporter was pursing her lips and saying "idhu konjam kashtam Sundar! Neenga originala oru 10 dharava kelungo.. You have to go sing in a high pitch to make this work! You are not ready for this. See if anyone else has actually even sung this on Smule!" 

(this is a difficult song Sundar! you listen to the original 10 times)

In Smule there are usually multiple tracks for any given song. However this song had pretty much one track which everyone was using. It was by a person called L. Narayanan. So I went through the list of folks who had sung this song and scrolled past pages and pages of recordings. Most of them were viewed only once or twice and none had likes against them. Then one stood out with 440 likes and a lot of gifts from listeners and a host of comments. 

Listened to this relatively young bearded guy belt this out with effortless ease and he was hitting the high notes as though he was buttering up toast! Was mesmerized by it. Definitely worth a listen!!

Played it to my MIL and she was also impressed. My first thought was "Smule is for casual singers and if this guy, Seenusings is a casual singer and he pulled it off, I can take inspiration from this and try to sing it!".

Listened to a dozen times and made my attempt. MIL finally gave me a D- and I did post it (see below)

Whenever you click "Follow" for someone on Smule, the next day it will show you their three or four most recent posts, kind of like when you make a new Friend on Facebook.

There was something called "Open Mic from Seenu" and it was 5 minutes long. At first I thought "Open Mic" was some kind of freestyle singing without any background music and wanted to see how someone would do that. Turned out it was a talk about this initiative for a group called Paadarivom Padipparivom, where he was one of the teachers!

My first reaction was "Good to know that Seenu is a very experienced pro singer! So I should not beat myself over my D- after 20 attempts!".

The second reaction was to quickly go check out this initiative where they were teaching amateur singers to improve their Smule singing, that too for free! 

This was almost end of June!

What happened next was nothing short of a magical ride.. 

Music and me.. the past

Given I have been singing a lot recently, thought of sharing my contact points with music in the blog. Things got to a point where this needed its own section in the blog. So after many years, opening a new tab, just for music!

To understand why I am where I am, it might not be a bad idea to explain things from the past. 

My grandmother, who is in her nineties, is a great Carnatic music singer. She had a lot of promise as a youngster and was noticed by many talent scouts (or whatever they were called in those days in Chennai). She got married young, had my mom at 15 and then her kids kept her busy. She still tried to sing after her kids grew up. Then I was born! At some point she became grandma daycare center and singing took a hit. There would always be whispers about how somehow my arrival had something to do with her singing expectations ending. 

My grandmother never mentioned anything to me ever. She always sang to me and would say "edhavadhu vadhyam vaasikka kaththuko.. ungamma appavala moonu kuzhandhaiya Engligh medium schoolukku anupparadhe periya vishayam. Ippo illattiyum ennikkaavadhu sandharpam kidaichcha, kaththuko!" 

(learn to play some instrument.. it is a big deal for your mom and dad to send three kids to English medium schools. Even if not now, someday when you get the opportunity, learn an instrument!"). I remember it like yesterday. 

Given my impatience, I rolled on the floor, cried, threw a trantrum and got enrolled in a Violin class at Shringeri mutt. It was a 1 hour group class in a small room in the office building attached to the Saradhambaal temple, near what is now Mandaiveli Rail station, and the monthly fees was 5 Rupees! However, there was no violin at home! I got to learn there and the teacher, a very old Iyengar thatha would let me stay back and practice for 30 minutes. Managed to learn the very basics, and did Sarali and Jantai Varisai there over a few months. Then things changed, school got busy and that was that!

Then I ended up in Varanasi. My classmate found out that the music department under Dr. N. Rajam had a beginners one hour violin class every Saturday. The teacher, yet another old Iyengar thatha, would teach four of us students and none of us had a violin! All three of us would practice the finger positions without a violin and play there on Saturday. It was also hard given Saturday noon was feast in the mess halls and this class would be at 2PM. We would fight the "undamyakkam" and try to concentrate in class.  

On top of that, it went swimmingly well as this thatha told me "You have to undo everything from the past and re-learn the right way". So over 5 months, I went from scratch (Sa-Pa-Sa) to Alankarams. Then the teacher got sick and the classes stopped. We became third year students and memorizing new English words on the Baron's GRE guide took priority over any other attempt to pursue learning Violin in Banaras!

In the last two months before leaving for the US, my moms school violin teacher taught me two geethams. Still no violin, but I did practice with her violin for a few days. She was a really great teacher.  None of the "Undo this and redo that.." business. She smiled and encouraged me to adapt as she was teaching me. Then I came to the US and given the two suitcases where my packing would have rivaled that of astronauts, it was amazing that the music book made it! Later I learned that my own sister was a student of the school from the very man who wrote that book! She sings well, but sticks to Carnatic music in select functions. Have not heard her sing otherwise or share recordings.

A few months into grad school, our senior and guide Vish Vadari organized a music class for a bunch of interested grad students and post docs. This was also a once a week, evening class on campus, where we would block a room and learn from a local teacher. She did something interesting. She taught us the basics (from Sa-Pa-Sa to Alankarams again) but also taught us music appreciation (as we were all adults) by teaching us Rama Nama Sankeerthanams by Thyagaraja. These are songs we have all heard in social functions like weddings etc. We even went as a group and sang at a local Thyagaraja aaradhana in New Jersey in a Church converted to a temple. This was my first attempt at singing carnatic music! 

Two years in, I moved schools and as a farewell gift, my grad school buddies all pooled in and bought me an antique violin! It was beautiful. They had it refurbed, new strings and all. Started practicing on my own whenever the mood hit me. It was always the sarali varisai to Alankarams. The one finger stuff Kalyani teacher had taught me before coming to US, was sadly forgotten.

It is around the same time that I started dancing and the music I played was almost always dance music. A heavy Latin influence to the point that my PhD thesis was dedicated to Julio Iglesias and Carlos Gardel. The only songs that came out of my mouth were in Spanish. 

Eventually ended up in the bay area. Got married, stopped dancing and tried to sing again after my wife encouraged me to go find a teacher and learn. The one place which was the go to music school in those times was in Fremont, a good 45 minute drive. Used to drive 45 minutes one way for a 45 minute music class.. Again from Sa-Pa-Sa.. unlearn.. relearn.. this time again, there were some small songs, taught occasionally.

Then jr. was almost on her way into this world and she became my music. 

When Jr. was in elementary school, I started to learn the guitar. That went great for a year, till my accident where my right arm was pretty much out of commission. It almost felt like there was some divine intervention that stopped me from learning music every time I crossed a six month period! If it happened once, it is a fluke, but this happened over and over again.

This time wanted to keep at it. Once my hand healed, thanks to yoga and another surgery, continued with the guitar. Learned for almost four years till my teacher said "You have graduated and I have taught you everything I could. The rest is up to you to practice and perfect!" . Then my job changed and ended going to Austin every alternate week and eventually to China and Taiwan every third week.

The guitar gently weeps.. still.. (here are  some old videos from the blog!) 

this video pretty much sums up my attempts at playing anything at home.. "Appppaaaa" would come the scream!

While I paint this as a bleak picture of me never getting to stick to music and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, truth is I was always close to music.

Here is the upside..

As a kid, I was always listening to my grandmother sing to me. My fathers elder sister was also an amazing singer and she used to sing whenever we used to meet or spend time together. She would tell me "Murali, unakku kural nalla irukku! Nee paatu kaththuko!" (Murali, you have a nice voice. You should learn to sing!) . Have never heard my mom or her siblings sing though, during my childhood.

Here are my dads older sister and my maternal grandma doing the aarati and singing. They would always be the ones to sing in any family function! (that grainy photo is from my Poonal)

My dad decided to splurge and get a Phillips gramaphone record player when I was around 4. We had only 5 records early on and we used to play it at bedtime almost every day in rotation. They were and I kid you not..

- Soundtrack of Ayappan movie

- Soundtrack of Adi Sankara movie

- MS Balaji Pancharatnamala

- Ayigiri Nandini by Anantharama deekshadhar

- MLV hits

Then my dad got a three disk MS set which had a black ODEON sticker in the middle. There were like 30 songs in those. A year later my uncle got a tape recorder after he came back from his first trip as a new employee. The whole family would be around this tape recorder. Tapes were becoming cheaper and more tapes were available. We could also "record" what we heard on All India Radio and our own voices. My grandmas voice was on a tape! My voice was on a tape somewhere!

We used to listen to music on a Phillips Transistor radio that had an antenna that went across the entire room. It was a copper coated mesh, that much I remember. We had it always set to AIR and listened to concerts and some film music. That was largely thanks to my last three aunts who were the younger generation and were fans of the movies that were emerging. This was the time where Rajni and Kamal were replacing Sivaji and MGR at the box office. Ilayaraja took over the airwaves. ( you can see that radio in the top shelf.. the TV was the first TV that we got. Doordarshan was our only channel and we would mostly listen to Carnatic concerts and the odd Hindi and Tamil movie they would play on Saturday and Sunday nights). 

When I was in 5th grade and suffered from severe Jaundice or when I had a skin infection and missed out on school for three months, would listen to whatever was playing on a small pocket transistor radio all afternoon with my eyes closed. That was my only solace during a miserable period. 

When I was going to college, my dad got me a Sony walkman from Burma Bazaar. I would spend most of my college days listening to all kinds of music on it. My collegemates, gave me a window to pop music which was also interesting!

The first thing I got after coming to the US was an RCA tape player and radio. Music was there in the lab all the time. On the plus side, I never had stage fright. Somewhere, there is a photo of me holding a mic on stage and singing at a TAGDV (Tamil Association of Greater Delaware Valley) Tamil New Year funtion. There was also another picture of me singing on stage at the Thiagaraja aradhana in NJ with hippie hairdo and all. Sadly, I cannot find those photos. Spent a day searching!! This is a photo of the Carnatic music group! Still in touch with Vish and Vatsan. The rest, I have no clue.. Hope they are all still singing!

Then the RCA player just started playing a different language. The feet were always moving, the heart was just beating to a new rythm! 

As a dad, would sing to both kids at bedtime. There was a nightly quiz for them called the "Tamil Mirugam Raagam",  which was questions about Tamil translations, a quiz about animals and identifying Carnatic music Ragas.  Had to practice a little bit, just to make sure they did a good job of identifying.

Jr. would guess about 20 ragas and the little one about four or five. This was when Jr. was ~5 and the little one was ~2. Still remember how the little ones answer to all clues were always "Is it Shanmukhapriya?" and when I would actually hum that, she will say something else!

We would play music on the radio or CD's all the time with the kids.. Learned to sing the entire collection of Rafi songs thanks to Jr. and the little one. The Boowah and Koala collection, Barney and Friends, Elmo hits. The musical taste just changed a lot. Wish there was a recording of my rendition of "down by the bay" or "baby beluga"! You would be proud of my effort!

Music was always there, in the periphery,  just not in a way I could sing and get better.

As the kids grew older, everytime I would start singing in the car, or sing along to something on the radio, the instant response would be "Appa, can you please shut up?!" . They would say "Please" before the shut up. 

Jr. learned to become a really good Saxophone player and the little one learned to play Western classical Violin. We wanted the kids to have music in their life. The amount of time I spent driving them to their class, sitting outside their class, hearing them learn and play, went by fast. Watched Jr. learn music for a few years, then decide to dance instead and do her Arangetram. There was a lot of music. The blog has videos of their journey with music and dance over the years! So we were surrounded by music and again it was just a different type of music. 

The antique violin still is in good shape. I just haven't gone to it regularly!

In the last 10 years or so, I had not opened my mouth to sing anything for fear of the "please shut up!" shout from the wife and kids. So shut up it was! 

Till earlier this year...

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