Bahudari and Friends

Bahudari has been one of my first loves in Carnatic music for as long as I can remember. In fact the very first post in this blog was on Bahudari - I had posted a varnam I'd composed well over a decade ago now. (I've had the wisdom to restrain myself from composing anything in Carnatic over the years, but didn't know any better back then. As they say in Tamil, "aaruva kOLAru".)
Anyway - the raga and its ilk have always fascinated me, and here's a long-pending attempt at bringing together some of my favorite film songs in scales close to Bahudari, along with the piece de resistance: Thyagaraja's Brova bharama. I've concluded with a brief thillana-esque piece that I came up with, along with some improvs. This is probably the first time I've also really tried to do harmonies with some of the film song lines. The video was shot at one of the beaches in Malibu, CA.

Here goes -