Why this Kolavari Di-A Commentary

Why this Kolavari Di?

Even as the scion of a movie czar croons an onomatopoeic word salad, apparently in a creative moment, it is clear that the viral spread of the kolaveri owes a lot to the social media and the emergence of the new youth power.

Kolaveri Di strikes one as a spontaneous burst of ethereal sound on the musical landscape with a dreamy composition, often cited as an example of Tanglish, but apparently more English than Tamil, with 38 of around 900 words. In this linguistic hybridism, it carries on the tradition of ‘hello mister how do you do’, Muquabala and the other current Bollywood staples. The language of the song is not that of the hi-brow urbane, but the colloque of the street, being easily understood by the masses. Its international appeal lies in the fact that it is almost English, barring the kolaveri word, which begs instant attention with its apparent nonsense entry, but imbued with the lyricist’s sentiments of a love-lorn.

The burgeoning and aspiring youth of today, especially in India, find a quick appeal in the song, as it portrays a casual urban youth, in a noveau career, mouthing a melange of sounds bordering on language loaded with apparently meaningless and murderously repetitive scat, as if taking on the rubric of Frank Sinatra’s Dooby Dooby Do, Lou Reed’s doo da-Doo or Goldfrappe’s Ooh la la, and wordlessly slipping across the musical frontiers beyond eras. The setting itself appears to have a lowly lit, dim studio capable of psychedelic echoes of one, two , three and demonstrating an attempt of a group of youngsters pecking at instant stardom. The calibrated casualness is punctuated with due importance to settings, language, tune changes with the élan of a perfectionist.

The youthful and dreamy escape is aimed at transporting the youth away from the problems of perceived inequality, injustice, hunger, drudgery into a reverie. On the other hand, the theme suggests a jilted lover, who has taken for granted the comforts of as a booming economy, high social mobility, social choice, and enough cash to splurge on scotch and ice. Social constraints popping up as holy cows in an era of renewed honour killings notwithstanding, the rebel in the youth would plod on to complain of the urge to murder. The protagonist portrays himself as a kolapo with a clutch of kolarovs ready to take on the kolaveri of a di.

In an era of short attention spans, the video is about four minutes, ideal for viral transmission across the u-tubes and facebooks of the world. The attention deficit is visible in the mindless esperanto centred around on focal theme and a lot of context building, a la dinka chika and chammak challo.

Whether the song would be a trendsetter of a new genre of Tanglish, or a link in a chain of mc-melodies in the pot au feu of nonsense lyrics would be of interest to watch.