Rocking journey
KOCHI: After being adjudged the Best Guitarist at the Jack Daniel Awards, for the third time, Baiju Dharmajan, fondly called as the ‘God of Small Strings’, has just released a new single Moham through ‘Songdew’ music company.
Moham is a mesmerising guitar rendition of a popular Malayalam song, Moham Kondu Njaan, that was originally composed by music director Johnson Master from the 1980 film, Shesham Kazhchayil.
A few weeks ago, when Baiju Dharmajan was recording a song for another project he got stuck and ended up playing one of Johnson Master’s classics. “That was how the track Moham was born,” he says.
“It was recorded outside my jamming room. If you listen closely, you can hear birds humming and chirping, apart from all the other natural sounds.”
Dharmajan now has plans to release an album paying tribute to 12 film composers. “I grew up by listening to the songs done by Johnson Master, Ilayaraja, R D Burman and Naushad,” he says. “During my childhood I started playing guitar with their songs. They are my inspiration.”
Apart from this, a new album, tentatively titled Rendamoozham is on the cards. “You may ask whether there is any connection with writer M T Vasudevan’s novel, Rendamoozham, and my answer is Yes!” says Dharmajan. “Like the novel, which is a retelling of the Indian epic Mahabharata, from the viewpoint of Bhima, the album will be having songs for inspirational characters such as Bhima, Eklavya, Ghandhari, Karna and Krishna.”
The song for Krishna has been titled, The Saint and the Singer. In the novel, he is depicted as a human and not as God. In the case of Eklavya, he is depicted as a tribal and a strong human being. “Even if her sons are portrayed in a negative way, Ghandari is a positive character in the novel,” says Dharmajan.
The songs will be performed by the Baiju Dharmajan Syndicate, a Carnatic rock band. They have already done one track, Karna. Dharmajan will be recording the Malayalam classic folk song Kaithola with the help of crowd funding.
Meanwhile, the band is all set to start a country-wide tour, from August 16, for the promotion of Moham. They will perform 30 shows this year.
The latest buzz is that the guitarist will be sharing the stage with rockers Antariksh at the Independence day concert in New Delhi. Finally, when asked about the prevalence of drugs in parties which have disc jockeys, Dharmajan says, “I accept that there are many mainstream musicians in the state who are using marijuana and weed. There are also many parties which are conducting solely with an aim to sell drugs. But there are also many shows and parties where there are no drugs.”