“If we were to just announce it’s a Purananutru paadal and sing it, no one will understand. While songs about Sangam literature may sound like a boring affair, the audience was pleasantly surprised at how far from their concert it turned out to be. Since we couldn’t go, we did it virtually,” he recalls. They wanted to celebrate April 14 as Tholkappiyar Dinam and we were to perform at the launch. We were to go to the US for FeTNA’s Tamil New Year event. “After the relaxations came in, we regrouped from January and returned full-fledged.īut, just as we started to perform again, the second wave was starting. But, a virtual concert in honour of the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) put their project on the map. Released on YouTube, the single received an overwhelmingly positive response. Months into the lockdown, Tamil Osai too realised the advantages of the virtual world and went the Zoom way to produce their next work - a rendition of Bharathidasan’s Sange Muzhangu. Soon enough, the team was preparing for a Southeast Asian tour when the pandemic hit the country and rendered all efforts impossible. A couple of months down the line, they were performing for the Tiruchy chapter of the Indian Medical Association. After days of training and practice, they showcased their set to the Tamil business community and there was no looking back at least for a while. The choral ensemble came together after a round of routine auditions.
We launched Tamil Osai at his event,” he narrates. Their first meeting happened at Women’s Christian College. “Ezhuchi (The Rise) was a means to bring Tamil entrepreneurs across the world under an umbrella and work towards the upliftment of the Tamil community.
Then, the dream of many years became a reality in November 2019 at the first meeting of Father Jegath Gaspar’s Ezhuchi conglomerate. This is where his interest in Tamil literature offered an opportunity. While film music is where he makes his living, he didn’t want to go down the same way when it came to rendering a service. For James, it was about giving back to Tamil Nadu and the Tamil community that gave him the identity of a music composer. He and his 60-odd disciples have embarked on a mission to put Sangam literature to modern music under the banner - Tamil Osai. How much do we know about Tamizh classics beyond the proverbial phrases, one-liners made famous by movies or the stray poetry remembered from school textbooks? Working to change this status quo is music composer James Vasanthan, trusting in the time-honoured wisdom to save something, set it to music.