fresh, when they sleep they get their beauty sleep and they look fresh, for me I need to sleep so that my voice sounds great and I sing my song without wasting the composer’ s time and energy, nailing the song as per his vision and getting it to that point where he is happy and also I am happy. You are giving everything into that song, your heart, your soul, your blood, your sweat.
Language has been no barrier for you and you’ ve sung in all South Indian languages, how do you go about that?
To be very honest, I have an ear for grasping sound so I used to imitate when I was in school. I used to listen and then imitate and because I used to imitate, it was easy for me to sing too. And then I realized that language isn’ t much of a problem and in school I used to study Arabic, I was very good at Hindi in school and I studied French and I was really bad at it and dreaded it. There have been instances where you do a corporate show and you perform for a Korean client and you have to learn a Korean song, I have done that. Recently Karsh( Kale) was producing an album for this amazing Chinese singer called Sa Dingding and I have featured on Malayalam / Chinese collaboration and Karsh is giving a brand new image in terms of her sound, him being the genius he is. So yeah, languages have never been a barrier for me, I’ ve sung in Telugu, Kannada and recently I’ ve recently been approached to sing in Gujarati as their industry is beginning to grow. I also happened to learn a little bit of Ohamia singing with Papon for Assamese when I was doing Coke Studio. As long as you treat your mind as a child, you can always teach your mind to learn right from the base. People keep approaching me with different languages because they think that my diction is quite okay and they’ re happy with the way I sing in their languages; they don’ t curse me so that’ s more than enough.
You experiment a lot with different genres, which would you say spoke to you the most?
Every genre is interesting in its own way and I’ m not trying to be diplomatic and it’ s just that sometimes you want to be doing everything but not everything may come to you perfectly. I used to sing Arabic in school and that was to a certain extent but now I’ m trying to sing even more perfectly. Sometimes when I’ m in Dubai and I’ m stuck in immigration or something and sometimes they have the prayer going on, they put it on the speaker, I just take my phone out and record the prayer. They sing it and it’ s really beautiful, so I try and learn inflections like that and try and do stuff like that so that I can I can improve myself because I learnt the language and I need to keep it intact so that makes me a cut above many other musicians in terms of delivery of content in the industry. So, that’ s how I train myself, if I’ m travelling so much and can’ t constantly learn music my only way of learning is to record content and to keep listening to it.
Where do you draw your inspiration from to create music?
There is nothing like that, so Tamil Fever was created by Nucleya and me in five minutes. We were in a hotel room and we didn’ t have a mic to record it, Nucleya had this basic beat and he was like can we do something on this and I was like do you have a mic to record it because I will lay you melody right now. He just turned the phone’ s video camera on and pressed record, he played the beat and I just started singing till the track ended. He stopped and he was like,“ Dude! The song is set.” And a few months later Sony approached us and that was it, the song was there and we just had to get the song written in
Tamil as per the concept of the song they wanted and my friend Christopher Pradeep wrote it and we recorded it and it was there for everybody to enjoy.
You’ ve sung a lot of songs in so many industries and have also released albums, both independent and commercial. How do you find the time?
Make time, as usual. It is very simple, you have to make time, and if you cannot make time you cannot make music. There are sometimes when I’ m gigging and recording very busily for weeks, sometimes you get a 3-4 day break and at that time I contact my friends whoever helps me produce and who I can produce with, I make time, either I fly them down or get to them, sit with them and share these ideas, melodies that I have on my phone, and see how we can arrange it and which angle we can go with to produce the song to make it sound unique. I always write lyrics when I’ m flying in flights; the melody is in my head so I keep writing them down. Sometimes I start writing a song and finish writing it before the flight takes off and those are the best songs that happen.
You’ re also a great hit when it comes to live performances as you get the crowd pumped up. Which do you like better, singing in a studio or at a live performance?
Both are just the same because you are performing at both, you are giving your heart and soul for both because you perform in a studio and give it your best so that the song sounds great and you’ re performing on stage and are giving your heart and sound so that it sounds great there too just that there’ s one person as an engineer or a composer in front of you and over there, there are just many more people. Honestly, my performance is the same in both places. The thing is, I do music, and when you do music you should look like you were born to do this. It applies to anybody, any kind of job. On Facebook, some people they write horrible stuff about Mr. Rahman being such a bad performer but even now when he’ s on stage that aura and the purity he spread is amazing. He is pure, his mistakes are pure, his songs and the way he sings is so pure, he is not pretentious, he might not be perfect but his imperfection is saw pure that it wants you to be someone like that even when he made a mistake, he smiled about it. People’ s heart should melt and people actually say“ Oh … he made a mistake, so cute.” And that’ s what I strive for where you become so great that one small mistake can be forgiven. But I’ m in a stage right now where even one mistake cannot be forgiven and I shouldn’ t forgive it myself.
Is there some sort of a pre-show routine that you follow?
No, I just pray. I make sure I pray before I get on stage. My band, Funktuation, and I pray together before we go on stage.
What advice would you like to give to upcoming musicians?
Just do what makes you happy, that’ s all. I’ ve been saying this for the last 10 years and I still say the same thing. If you aren’ t happy doing what you’ re doing, don’ t do it. Simple. And don’ t be pretentious and just be yourself no matter what.
Lastly, what do your future projects look like?
Teen, Amitabh Bachchan’ s movie and then I have many that I cannot reveal. Independent is my album which I’ m working on, called Silence Swaad Anusaar with my friend and brother Dub Sharma and I’ m really looking forward to this EP because it’ s going to be something that’ s really, really cool.
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