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Two new apps by Nextwave Multimedia for Nokia Lumia and other Windows Phone handsets, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets and Nokia Symbian phones.
‘Melodic Chants’ and ‘Navagraha Kritis’ are the first two in a series of apps being developed jointly by Nextwave Multimedia and Bombay Jayashri, the renowned Carnatic vocalist, and now, an Oscar nominee for her song in the movie ‘Life of Pi’.
With India becoming a part of the ‘global village’, the younger generation of Indians are getting more and more influenced by western tastes in all areas, including music. ‘Melodic Chants’ and ‘Navagraha Kritis’ are a part of an effort by Bombay Jayashri to bring the richness of our traditional music to the young through the technology used by them. And joining her in this task is Nextwave Multimedia.
Melodic Chants
‘Melodic Chants’ contains 8 chants in 2 volumes with 4 in each. These chants, in the voices of children singing along with Bombay Jayashri, are a lyrical string of names expressing the attributes or the nature of the Divine. Volume 1 of Melodic Chants has chants to Durga, Maruti, Vishnu, and Child Krishna. Volume 2 has chants to Ganapathy, Shiva, Krishna and Amba Parameswari.
Parents can download these beautiful chants, set to simple tunes and talas, to sing along and teach their children.
Along with the songs, the lyrics and their meanings are also provided to help understand and learn the chants.
Navagraha Kritis
The Navagraha Kritis of Muthuswamy Dikshitar, glorify the nine planets. These strikingly beautiful compositions describe the astronomy of these planets elegantly and contain the essence of jyotisa (science of astrology) and mantra shastra (Vedic texts).
This app contains kritis on Surya, Candra, Angaraka, Budha, Brhaspati, Sukra and Sani sung by Bombay Jayashri and her students. These compositions are strikingly beautiful in their tala structure, which employs the seven shuladi talams.
The ‘Navagraha Kritis’ app does not contain kritis on the ‘inauspicious’ planets Rahu and Ketu as they are now not considered to be by Muthuswamy Dikshitar but were later compositions by his followers, added to round out the traditional nine.
Along with the songs, the app also has the lyrics and their meanings.
‘Both the volumes of ‘Melodic Chants’ are available on Nokia Store, Windows Phone Apps+Games Store, Google Play and iTunes
Navagraha Kritis is currently on Google Play. It will be available on all the other stores by January 19, 2013.
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Nextwave Multimedia (www.nextwavemultimedia.com) are the developers of the award-winning app, ‘Comicshead’ and ‘World Cricket Championship’ that is fast becoming the world’s favorite cricket game.
