MUSIC has no language, stands not just in concept anymore, as this world of music and the possibility of collaborations sees no boundaries. A Tamil film will soon echo Hungarian sounds, with lavishly sprinkled Carnatic music. Abhishek Shankar’s directorial debut, Kadhai, has already created ripples with the use of live sound and the collaboration of artists like Dr Balamuralikrishna, 'Naaku Mukka' Chinna Ponnu, Malgudi Shubhaa, Shankar Mahadevan, Mahalakshmi, Vasundhara Das and Blaaze, along with renowned folk singers Mukthiyar Ali and Raju Das Baul, being placed on the same platform for a single song. The rest of the sound track has an entirely different story to tell. The sounds are different again, but from parts of the world that have not seen much collaboration with India. Music director Paul Jacob of Laya Project fame and his label Bodhi Muzzik has just returned from Hungary after an exciting project with the Hungarian Heritage centre. “It started when a few artists from the Hungarian Heritage Centre were in the city to watch the Chennai Sangamam. They expressed a desire to collaborate with Indian musicians, especially Carnatic musicians, to produce different sounds. This soon materialised and I made a two-week trip to Hungary”, says Paul Jacob.
“They have a database of artists and documentation of every form. Not just that, the traditional gypsy musicians can actually read and write scores, making collaboration with any musician easy”, he adds. Going initially with an idea of exploring how a collaboration of this sort would work, Paul returned with recordings for the film’s sound track and plans of a show and an album by the end of the year. “The gypsy music there is very different, and in some way relates to the patterns Indian music follows with regard to pitch and scales, it was easier to teach them raagas and match scales as compared to Western musicians”, Paul explains. Besides a drastic change in sounds, one thing Jacob feels should be brought back to film music is live sound. “All our music has turned electronic, so much so that even stage shows have now begun using electronic sounds. I want to bring back to music the touch of live sound and that is perhaps why I have recorded most of my tracks in live performance spaces”, Paul tells us. “We want it all live”, he insists.
The film 'Kadhai', which is inspired by its Bollywood version 'Shabd', deals with the story of a writer, and in Kollywood’s latest version a musician too. The audio will be launched in the first week of August.
expresso@epmltd.com