Alaipayuthe - Shobana Vignesh (Mahanadhi Shobana)



The title of this song is "Alaipayuthe" and is performed by Shobana Vignesh. The music of the Carnatic style originates from southern India. This is performed with female vocals, mridangam (drum), ghatam (clay pot), violin, and tambura.

As music educators, we try to share musics of the world to broaden our students' awareness and understanding of other cultures and their music. Authenticity is an important component for developing a  contextual understanding of music within a given culture. Koops (2010) presents various models for addressing authenticity in the classroom, geared toward helping students most fully embody the original intent and expression of a piece. She cautions that with Palmer's continuum approach to authenticity --working toward offering students the most authentic exposure-- may result in some music being inaccessible in a classroom setting, and this may be true of the historical/personal and reproduction models as well. With this song's Carnatic style, the text, instrumentation, pitch and rhythm systems are so complex, that accept for the Santos' "beyond authenticity" model, this music would be nearly impossible to approach with an authentic performance goal. However, the value of exposing students to authentic music through directed listening should not be discarded. 

 Koops, L.H., (2010).  Can't we just change the words?  Music Educators Journal. 97(1), 23-28. 

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