Rain Songs

Hard time figuring out whom she was aspiring in that impassive crowd. None had any reciprocal expression.
Yes, the lady is too dreamy of her persistent love.

The impostor Abhay Deol would have tried his luck in Bhojpuri movies. Then Meghalayan, then Nicobar, and finally lost all hope in mainland and overseas India to wash up in this music album with his dispirited and emotionless presence. He seems to be burdened with the vagueness of a hundred lost souls in his poker-faced act.

 

Maate Vinadhuga

He: Jacket kosam vaccharannaru?
She: Meeru wallet lo dabbulu levu annaru?

That's how the song precedes with a tease between the lead. The jacket is laundered and tossed around a few times in the song, even dropped in a puddle as a pretext to meet up thereafter.



Though the rain element is only thin-scripted in the song, the intensifying hum between the lovers is melting ..

 

Box of Rain (Grateful Dead)

Grateful dead is one of those bands whose etymological origins and inquiry on the fan club can easily contribute to fun-to-know probe in any quiz show.

The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, in his autobiography (p. 62), "... [Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial."

Deadhead or Dead Head is a name given to fans of the American rock band the Grateful Dead. In the 1970s, a number of fans began travelling to see the band in as many shows or festival venues as they could. With large numbers of people thus attending strings of shows, a community developed. Deadheads developed their own idioms and slang.​

Box of rain isn't their greatest anthem yet I enjoy the lyrical blitheness in their strum.

And it's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
Or leave it if you dare

 

Totoro (Studio Ghibli)
Ask me the cutest Studio Ghibli movies, and I shall name "Ponyo" and "Totoro".

Incidentally much rain with the characters soaking in storm in both the movies.

Totoro burst out of Ghibli imagination like no other otherworldly creature. He is sneaky and delightful in the animation. I could not find a self-contained song in which Totoro dances to the rain. Therefore, just a sequential song from the movie with rainswept theme.

 

Wind and Rain (Movie: Songcatcher)

Growing up, I was avid about storytelling shows on Doordarshan, be it Vikram Aur Betaal or Dada Dadi Ki Kahaniyan.

A typical episode begins with Betaal's or Dadi's voiceover "Once upon a time, there were two sisters/brothers..."

So does this song from the soundtrack of the movie Songcatcher

There were two sisters of county Clair
Oh, the wind and rain
One was dark and the other was fair
Oh, the dreadful wind and rain.

(Listen to the full song for the folk story)

Songcatcher is a 2000 drama film directed by Maggie Greenwald. It is about a musicologist researching and collecting Appalachian folk music in the mountains of western North Carolina. Although Songcatcher is a fictional film, it is loosely based on the work of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and that of the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, portrayed at the end of the film as professor Cyrus Whittle.​

My favorite in the ballad collection is "When Love Is New" sung by Dolly Parton in the soundtrack. (Just because it happens to be Dolly Parton.)

 

Louis Prima - Pennies from the Heaven

No toddler grows up without listening to folk tales of monsters stomping in the clouds or the sun and the moon wedded amidst trumpet band on inquiring about the angered voice heard past the window. What's that? On hearing such bizarre but fun-stating origin of the blasted sound, the kid is satisfied and dives back into his homework or whatever he was doing before distracted by the thunder clap. These days kids might swing their phone and fact-check the alt-truth.

But, what if the sound was that of pennies released from the heaven?

Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven
Don't you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven?
You'll find your fortune's fallin' all over the town
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down

So, when you hear it thunder, don't run under a tree
There'll be pennies from heaven for you and me

Might be challenging to persuade the fact-checking brainer to scoop the pennies fallen from heaven in a thunder burst, but, cute parenting is about playful indulgence before the educated toddlers start yapping about some Franklin flying a kite in a storm.

 

Listen to the Pouring Rain (Movie: Bombay to Goa)

Usha Uthup, when she was Iyer, as herself in the travel-caper movie has the unrivaled vocals for Western recreation in India. When her concerts with English songs were aired on television in my childhood, I would be disco-delirious to her resounding stage presence. And if I hadn't seen her on television, I could easily be duped of her being a Western with such rare English-accented pitch for those times. The best segment in the medley is "Fever" ...outstanding ...she does a competing Peggy Lee for Indian audiences.

I am not trying to compare her with any Western counterpart but since the medley is cover (reproduction) of known Western songs, her versatility outshines because to be original is to be natural but to imitate is to be learned and not everyone can reproduce with such authority and poise the works of others in that performing song in Bombay in Goa.

Ask me to sing like Uthup, and I wouldn't even know where to begin. My favourite song in her all time anthology is "Rambha Ho Ho". What a rambhalicious rambling song !

Here's the opening tune of her song from Bombay to Goa.



And the original

 

Subhalekha Rasukunna

The song is misty, not rainy.

A sari in South India is draped with pallu falling behind the shoulder unlike the frontal pallu of Gujarat. During those days, cross-regional styles were in vogue. I would recollect this song many years later as that Gujarati-fashioned attire of Radha. I cannot pinpoint what I like about this song but I would have listened to this song many times for its tana teen teen taan beat in my boxbeating and scatting of the song as my undisciplined vocals obstruct me from singing any song.




From a chrysanth-colored saree, the song adapts to a long-skirted tennis look of Radha. I would silly confuse Radha with Rajani much in those days. They looked different. They had no overlapping acting chops. Yet, I could not have confused them for their starting letter. I must have suffered mild prosopagnosia to not recognize them instantly.

The color of Radha's blouse matches with that of the surrounded tables. The camera zooms out for an aerial view only at the end of the sequence to emphasize such painstakingly color-coordinated layout of the song.



I would still enjoy the minutiae in the song over the lyrical rendition with intrigue of the cigar-smoking man in a Hitchcockian cameo in the subsequent sequence waving at the blithe couple. The horses were less intriguing as the romancing knight, or in this case the mountain desperado going by the title of the film, disembarked from the horse earlier in the song for a rendezvous with his lady love. But what about the other horse? Where did it come from? Did he also find his lady-horse nearby cavorting.

I love the encroaching presence of trivial ensemble in the song. The song would not have been less catchy without the puff and hooves but tiny details make up for recollectable tunes years since first heard.



I am able to dredge out this song years later on probed for rain because the mist, though is a forerunner to rain incumbent to the thread, has been romancingly captured and frosty prevailed through out the tryst between the lead who are exceptional for their dancing chops. Though this particular song is only a slow-burner that doesn't blast off in their full renown for dance, the subdued footfall from the celebrated pairing is endearing.