Singer Neha Nair and musician Yakzan Gary Pereira are striking a new note as composers. ‘Raave moodal manjil nee chaayunnu…’, their melodious number in Amal Neerad’s Iyobinte Pusthakam , is creating waves in a trailer of the film that has been released on YouTube. The mellow song featuring Fahadh Faasil and Isha Sharvani is a visual symphony and viewers and listeners have been busy liking it and sharing it on social media.
The singer and the composer agree that the reception to the lyrics, written by Rafeeq Ahamed and rendered by Haricharan and Neha herself, is indeed music to their ears. All the three songs in the period film directed by Amal have been composed by the duo, who made their debut as composers in the movie 5 Sundarikal , produced by Amal.
“We never thought we would ever compose for a film. Yakzan and I have been composing for about three years now. Those were songs written and composed by us. Our dream was to release a CD of our songs or a single. But the film was an unexpected bonanza and we have been working on it since November last,” says Neha, a trained classical singer and a well-known musician and the only female singer in Avial’s live performances.
She says it was Yakzan, a superb pianist who plays with Vidwan band, who pulled her into composing for films. “That is because she is a singer and I am an instrumentalist. So we complement each other and two heads are always better than one. She is strong in vocals while my strength is in music. A lot of directors now work with a team of musicians though not all of them get credit for the music,” says Yakzan.
The door to tinsel town was opened by Anwar Rasheed who got to hear about Yakzan from his friend. Anwar talked to Yakzan about the music for a trailer of Ustad Hostel . Although that was not used for the trailer, Anwar liked what the youngster had composed in a day and promised to keep in touch with him. When Anwar was working on 5 Sundarikal , he got in touch with Yazkan to compose the music.
“It was good break for us because the film was made up of five short films and so it was a learning curve for us before we got the opportunity for a feature film. Shyju Khalid and Anwar used two lyrical songs, ‘Manthara katte…’and ‘Kaana dooram…’, both sung by Neha, in their films Sethulakshmi and Aami , respectively.
Amal must have been pleased with their efforts because when he began working on Iyobinte Pusthakam , he called in the two musicians to score the music for his magnum opus. The soothing song that has been released certainly does credit to the musical duo.
“We cut down on our band performances and worked hard on this project. Although we were used to writing and composing songs for our performances, for Music Mojo on Kappa TV and so on, this was a different project. We had to compose the music that would go with the situation and the director’s vision. We had to go beyond pleasing ourselves,” says Neha.
The three songs have been sung by Neha, Haricharan, newcomers Amal C., Anil Ram and a couple of other voices. Moroccan singer Waleed has rapped in Arabic for a tribal number composed by the duo. The music has also been a collaborative effort with the two composers turning to their friends to enhance the orchestration. “The recording was done in Chennai, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Since Waleed was in the city, his recording was done here. The sarangi was played by a friend in Delhi,” explains Neha.
Agreeing that it is an interesting phase in Malayalam music, with listeners getting the opportunity to listen to a wide variety of voices and genres of music, the two say that instead of water-tight departments of writing, composing and singing, the music scene is also seeing a number of musicians doing all three and coming up trumps too. “In the West, that is how it has always been but it is catching on now in the Malayalam film industry too,” says Neha.
They are now waiting to see the response to their work for Iyobinte Pusthakam . Well, the song that has been released is certainly a job well done.
