‘Kerala Song’ from Natpe Thunai released yesterday. The first person I thought of while listening to it was my dance teacher from school. If she had to use this song for a function, she would leave out all the lyrics, calling it vulgar, and just keep the music. For once that would be a good idea.
The ‘Kerala Song’ is basically what Tamil college boys have been telling Kerala girls for a long time now. You are our sixers, all other (Tamil) girls are our sisters. There’s no need to see a difference between the two states, but that’s only because I want you.
HipHopTamizha sings this, and the chorus singers repeat, ‘Enga state Kerala ano, enga CM Vijayan ano, enga dance Kathakali ano, enaku nee venu.’ The boys know they might land at the police station for this, but the police can’t do anything, their own fathers can’t do anything. This combo has to work, they tell us cheerfully with mild desperation.
The good thing about this song is the hiphop-koothu-chenda fusion, and the #NatpeThunai challenge that was fun because of it. Prior to song release, the challenge asked people to send videos of themselves dancing to a part of the ‘Kerala Song’. In the final video we see some nice bits of old and young people dancing between the lyric portions.
This is a Jimmiki Kamal-like attempt, an idea picked up from the trend of Tamil boys liking Kerala girls that Jimmiki Kamal set last year, when one video of a few women from Kerala dancing to the song became viral in Tamil Nadu, especially among college boys.
Many Tamil girls posted their own versions of the dance but nothing was as popular. What was it about girls from Kerala, they asked the boys. This soon turned into a Malayali vs. TN girl meme fight.
Around the same time, Meyaadha Maan‘s ‘Thangachi Song‘ released. It was about the sibling rivalry/love between Murali and his sister Sudarvizhi. She danced better than him in the song, and it was one of the only man-woman sequences in the film where the woman got good screen space in a non love duet.
The song was said to be a tribute to all sisters. It hit a million views in a few days, and the matter died down.
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But why this was a consolation for Tamil girls, no one asked. Why was the fight with Malayali girls in the first place, when the men should’ve just been asked to look at women as people, and not their sisters or lovers.
