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What happens when you gift a lazy Sunday afternoon to Usha Uthup? Arindam Chatterjee finds out.

Ideally, she would not waste even a moment to break into those love-soaked classic jazz and blues tunes.

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However, singing Georgia is far from her mind right now, as Usha is busy chortling out instructions to a select group of singers comprising Shane Hyrapiet, Jojo, Chanel and Jayeeta Pandey for Jayabrato Chatterjee’s second feature film Lovesongs: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.

For her loyalists, the wait has ended. Uthup has just turned music director. “I have been composing jingles for quite some time now. So when Jayabrato asked me to compose for his film, I agreed immediately,” says Usha.

The director, of course, could not be happier as he was planning this move since the early 1980s. “Usha had sung a nightclub song in my debut film Kehkashaan. From that day I had kept her in mind for my next film,” says Jayabrato.

The reason, both singer and her ardent loyalist admit, not only rests on Uthup’s ability to capture time, she has seen from close quarters, but also because both felt it necessary to bring back soul into contemporary music.

To instil classic into modern, Uthup and Jayabrato have chosen eight songs which embody the love stories strewn across three generations. “While Mridula and Aftab’s love fails to reach its conclusion, Palaash and Dev’s romance is intense, physical, exuberant, young. Meanwhile Rohan and Tara’s love is tender, delicate,” informs Jayabrato.

The songs straddle the diverse worlds of classic jazz, pop and ghazals.