Shankar Mahadevan weaves music and poetry, in Bengaluru
From anecdotes behind iconic songs to how his career shot up, composer and singer Shankar Mahadevan shares it all with Bengaluru
Singer and music composer Shankar Mahadevan inaugurated the eighth edition of Bengaluru Poetry Festival on Saturday followed by a session alongside author Ashis Ghatak, who wrote his biography. Speaking to us exclusively about the festival, Mahadevan quips, “I was very excited to attend a poetry festival. I’m very motivated as well after the session. I really hope and pray that such kind of festivals can happen around the country!”
Ask the 57-year-old what it is about the poetry festival that captured his heart and he says, “A festival like this is the only way you can promote our poetic abilities not just nationally but also regionally. There’s a lot of Kannada poetry happening here and similarly, for example, if this festival were to take place in Maharashtra, underrated and rare Marathi poetry would also be unearthed. Some great works, across the country, could be dug out.”
On the topic of his session, Mahadevan was stunned with the kind of reception he received in Bengaluru. He says, “The people here are so loving and welcoming. When I was told that my session would be at 9.30am, I didn’t expect many people to show up but it was full house and more! This just shows their enthusiasm and their respect towards reviving and experiencing the art form of poetry in a deeper way.”
Mahadevan session was one filled with anecdotes and some live music too. Blessing the audience with his vocals, the singer sang some of his hits like Maa (Taare Zameen Par, 2007), Dil Chahta Hai (Dil Chahta Hai, 2001), Shree Ganeshay Dheemahi (Viruddh, 2005) and more. Sharing an anecdote on the creation of Dil Chahta Hai’s title track, Mahadevan shared, “Dil Chahta Hai’s title track came to me when I was brushing my teeth! We had that iconic tune in mind already but we were working on it for a romantic tune in the movie, which is now known as Jaane Kyon. I realised that the beats fit perfectly with the title and that this was it. I told everyone to drop what we were doing and work on this as the title track, and it became what it was then.”
Mahadevan also gave an insight into how he got into the music industry and scaled up from there. “I was raised in a middle-class family in Chembur, Mumbai. My first foray into music was when I won a Golden Voice Award in school for singing on stage. Back then the stage looked very big and it was almost terrifying, but now if I had to go back, it looks like a very small stage,” he says and further adds that he began his career by doing commercial jingles. “I used to get called by music directors who would ask me to sing four bars of an aalap in a song. I didn’t take it negatively, in fact I thought that they had to approach me to sing that part because I was the only to do it. Gradually those four bars became a complete song and the rest is history.” His foray into music for South Indian languages began with Tamil. “AR Rahman sir and I began our careers at the same time. He moved to Mumbai to work on a Mani Ratnam film Bombay. In the film, during a riot scene, there is a dark aalaap that plays in the background, which was me singing it! We’ve collaborated a lot together. He even got me to do a few Tamil tracks, and I remember the first three ones I did were all recorded in the span of one night! But that helped introduce my voice to Tamil listeners and also got me my National Award for the song Yenna Solla Pogirai,” he shares.
Sharing an incident on how poetry goes well with music, Mahadevan talks about the making of Kajra Re (Bunty Aur Babli, 2005). “In music we have something known as dummy lyrics which are essentially words that may or may not have any meaning to them, but you use those to create the whole song. I remember sitting with Gulzaar sahab and singing ‘Kajra re, kajra re, tere kaale kaale naina’. He simply told me that he’ll work around it and I didn’t even expect those words to be lyrics in the song, let alone become so iconic. He modified kaale to kaare, to make it sound more folksy. But this is an example of how poetry and music mix together,” he says.