She comes across as the perfect girl-next-door, with an affable smile and an enchanting voice. But behind that innocence in voice and body language, the singer in young Kalyani Nair harbours serious thoughts about music.
When she says, “Music is my life,” she means it. She “wants to work with music” and would “like to grow with music” and leave her mark as a singer. When we caught up with Kalyani at her maternal grandmother’s home at Thycaud, she passionately shared her dreams about music, her penchant for arranging harmonies and experimenting with different music genres.
Her biggest dream is to start an acapella band (acapella means singing without any instruments). “It has always been a dream for me to start such a band and I am working towards it. It will be an octet of voices, comprising me and my friends. I don’t want to talk too much about something that is yet to come out,” she says.
Kalyani and her group of musician friends have already won immense fan following post their music sessions, ‘Harmonize Projekt’ - seasons 1 and 2 on Rosebowl channel. While the first season had her singing with Pradeep, Harshitha and Keba, the second had Kalyani, Pradeep, Harshitha, Keba, Siva and Roshni. All of them are her friends from Chennai. They presented
appealing versions of covers of popular English albums, besides evergreen Tamil and Malayalam numbers (enjoy them all on YouTube).
Music is something which she inherited from her father Ganesh Kumar, who was in the army (he named her Kalyani after his favourite raga). “But, owing to the transferable nature of his job, I couldn’t undergo training under one teacher. My learning was mostly through listening. My brother, Captain Govind who used to have his rock band while in college, was the one who familiarized me with western music,” she says.
Kalyani came to Chennai in 2004, did her graduation in Economics from Ethiraj College and post-graduation in Public Relations from MOP Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai.
She learnt piano from Augustine Paul, who is the conductor of the Madras Musical Association, one among the established choirs in the country. Kalyani is a member of the 80-member choir. She has learnt Carnatic music from Binni Krishnakumar and is now learning Hindustani from Geeta Hegde in Bangalore. The music industry took note of her post her appearance in ‘Symphony’, the music-based show on Kairali TV.
Stage shows and playback singing followed.
It was Vidyasagar who introduced her to playback singing with the Tamil film ‘Parthiban Kanavu’ (‘Buck buck maadapoora’). She followed it up with more movies in Tamil - ‘Thendral’ (‘Parthiban kanadi thozhi’), ‘Raaman Thediya Seethai’ (‘Mazhai ninru pinbum’), ‘Thavamaayi Thavamirindhu’ (‘Unnai charanadainthen’), ‘Jerry’ (‘Yen swaasathil’) and a few others like
‘Vaathiyar’, ‘Sabari’, ‘Em Mahan’, ‘Aathi’, ‘‘Thambi’ and ‘Kanaa Kanden’.
In Malayalam, she has sung for ‘Pattalam’ (‘Dingiri Pattalam), ‘Thaskara Veeran’ (‘Arithiri mulle), ‘Sathyam’, ‘Kochirajavu’ , and very recently ‘Vandemataram’.
She has performed with almost all the leading singers in the industry. “One exciting performance was with Hariharan sir in Bangalore,” she remembers.
“Vidyasagar sir has been very encouraging right from the beginning. Initially, singing in Tamil and Malayalam was quite difficult for me since I had grown up listening to a lot of Hindi. But he patiently used to wait for me to get comfortable with the song. I think that really helped in shaping up my confidence,” Kalyani says.
It is this confidence which now makes her say - “For me, music is not something you learn in the studio. But it doesn’t mean that I am not keen on playback singing. It is very rarely that you get a song of your taste. Nevertheless, I have been lucky. I have a group of friends who share my interests. Music flows naturally from us and we have come up with our versions of the songs.
Now I want to do something of my own. I still haven’t figured it out. But I want to come out with something which has my stamp.”
When asked about her visits to her parents’ homes in the capital city, the conversation got diverted to her pet dog, ending it on a poignant note.
“We are settled in Chennai. We used to take turns to go on holidays to Thiruvananthapuram till recently, because I didn’t have the heart to leave my pet dog Crusoe alone. But he died recently. This time I too came down with my parents because it feels so lonely without him at home,” she says with a sad smile, which tells a lot about the love she had for her German Shepherd.