Why this song
Geetanjali is a Mani Ratnam film from 1989, with a six-song soundtrack by Ilaiyaraaja. Its premise — two young people, one of them dying, falling in love anyway — will sound familiar to anyone who has seen The Fault in Our Stars or Dil Bechara. It got there decades earlier.
Om Namaha means to bow down in respect. The song is an ode to the exact moment love is born, and it’s sung by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and S. Janaki, with lyrics by Veturi Sundara Rama Murthy.
What makes it worth taking apart is that almost everything in it is doing something slightly unusual, while sounding completely natural.
Rhythm: a heartbeat that won’t sit in four
The rhythm imitates a heartbeat — and it’s in 7/8.
That’s the first surprise. Seven is an odd meter; it doesn’t divide evenly, and it doesn’t resolve the way four does. It’s a grouping you feel as slightly off-balance, perpetually leaning forward. For a song about the moment love arrives, a pulse that won’t quite settle is not an accident.
It sits at roughly 220 BPM and stays stable throughout, with guitar carrying the accompaniment.
If you want to feel it: count seven evenly, then drop the third beat and change the sound on the fifth, sixth and seventh. The groove that emerges is the one under the whole song.
Melody: leaping, not stepping
The song is a duet, and the variation comes from switching between male and female voices across sections — call and response. The melodic phrase itself is simple and repeats; what changes is who sings it and what harmony sits under it.
The useful distinction here is conjunct versus disjunct motion. Conjunct melodies move in steps — neighbouring notes, easy to sing, the way most nursery tunes work. Disjunct melodies leap.
Om Namaha is full of disjunct motion, which is exactly why the verses are harder to sing than they sound. The melody keeps jumping. Most listeners register it as graceful; most singers discover it isn’t easy.
Harmony: a pendulum between tonic and dominant
The song opens on the syllable Om — a sound considered in many traditions to be the sound of the universe, and generally placed around the pitch E♭.
The song is in E♭.
From there it runs a tonic and dominant relationship, and the structure is almost mechanically symmetrical. The male voice sings the phrase in the tonic key. The female voice takes the same melodic shape and shifts it to the dominant, B♭. The structure of the melody doesn’t change — only its harmonic footing does. Then it swings back:
tonic → dominant → dominant → tonic male → female → male → female
A pendulum. Two voices, one shape, alternating ground.
There’s also a B major chord used as an accidental — raising the fifth from B♭ to B — which creates a moment of tension against everything around it. One note, deliberately outside the key, doing a great deal of work.
Tone colour: a simple arrangement, densely used
The arrangement is interestingly restrained: a main vocal melody, a drum pattern supported by guitar running throughout, strings in the background, and interludes between verse and chorus.
The interludes are where it gets interesting. Chimes, mandolin, double bass, flute and violins appear, with a pulsing bass line that imitates the drum groove rather than simply anchoring it. Instruments imitate each other — one states a figure, another answers it.
The second interlude is the clearest case: a conversation between flute and violins, each answering the other’s phrase. That’s counterpoint — independent lines that remain individually coherent while fitting together.
What to listen for
- Count seven. Once you hear the 7/8, you can’t unhear the forward lean.
- Follow one phrase across voices and notice the harmonic ground shift under it while the shape stays put.
- Wait for the second interlude and listen to the flute and violins take turns.
- Find the tension chord — the one moment that sounds like it stepped outside the key, because it did.
Further listening
Lingashtakam sits in a similar harmonic world, and makes a good companion piece if you want to hear the same tonic-dominant logic in a devotional context rather than a romantic one.
Episode 2 of Beyond Listening. Start with the Elements episode if you want the vocabulary first, or carry on to Khwabon Ke Parinde.