BENGALURU: It is always an exciting event for Indie music lovers when singer Sangeetha Rajeev drops a new song, as she did recently. The song Innu Yakka Baralilla, released on July 1 on YouTube and is currently trending with over seven lakh views. Rajeev did a big reveal of the song at her recently-concluded London concert. The love she got from the audience was something that she still is overwhelmed with. “The love Kannadigas shower on me every time I release a song feels good. So I think the credit goes to them. The fans always know the lyrics of every one of my songs,” says an excited Rajeev, from London.
Rajeev tries to bring in a mix of folk and contemporary influences to her music and it is evident in Innu Yakka Baralilla too. “It’s a folk song. My idea is to have folk songs mixed with the pop genre because it appeals to the younger audience. These days, people, especially the younger generation, are forgetting the music of yesteryear, the ones that we’ve been listening to for so many years now. But if you give the same song with a tune that they love, they will listen to it,” says Rajeev.
She presents the song Nee Hinga Nodabyada as an example. “It’s a folk song but it got the most amount of love from the younger audience. Probably because the song sounded fresh with modern beats,” Rajeev says, adding that she hopes to make music that will be at par with K-pop in terms of popularity. While Rajeev composed and sung Innu Yakka Baralilla, Pradyumna Narahalli wrote the lyrics for it. “Though it’s inspired from a folk song, we have only used a single phrase in Innu Yakka Baralilla, everything else are original lyrics by Pradyumna. I believe recreating things in a better way, not just copying it. I call it the new-age folk,” says Rajeev.
With an aim to make Indian folk music a worldwide phenomenon, Rajeev hopes that it manifests into an exclusive genre. Her next song will be a Punjabi song, Laung Vacha.