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	*singara chennai - behind the scenes* an interview with karthik raaja
saregamaremix - 18 apr 2004 - karthik raaja lounge...

anything specific regarding the plot or treatment of the movie singara chennai that made you accept the offer ?

The plot was an interesting one and though I knew that this was a small budget movie, I tried taking up the challenge to make it sound musically good. The film had all new crew except a few, including me. This is the smallest budget movie I've ever worked in but since I like the producer I accepted to do it for him.

appuram enna - this song is pretty infectious and has good staying power, starting off with jazzy melody/vocal and proceeding into quite a bit of folksy arrangement/vocals. any comments on the song and arrangements?

This song is one of my favourites in the movie. yes it has a kind of a nursery rhyme feeling to it, including the words. We composed this in Ideal Beach Resort (Mahabalipuram) and the lyricist came up with "apparam enna....." and I liked the idea and immediatly came out with the tune. We kind of finished this in 5-10 minutes.
We have used urumi and other live percussion and the shehnai as you can hear. All the others are mostly programmed.

appuram enna - also, this seems to be the first of your songs sung by vijay yesduas. any comments on the commonality between you and vijay, with both having legendary/illustrious fathers having excelled in their domains. what kind of rapport do you share with vijay ?

I've never worked with him before though we came to know of each other through bhavatha. Both of them have been good friends for a long time and I just thought of him for this song. We had a lot of fun fooling around with each other while working. He's a real nice guy to be around with....funny.

kannadi malligaye - this songs has techno beats, first interlude has folksy vocals and some more jazzy notes. the lyrics of the song imply a a wedding song. is it so ? any comments on the situation/narration that served as inspiration for this song ?

I had to finish the song in a hurry, as I had to give them the song for shoot and it got delayed because the lyrics wasn't ready by the time of recording and you can almost feel the haste in the song. I am not that happy with the lyrics, one of the producer's friends wrote it and though he is talented, as it was his first time writing for me, he was kind of nervous and that made the words sound less interesting though we tried to make it sound good musically. It is indeed a wedding song.

kabul desathu - this song seems to grow on you. the alternating of male singing with attitude and soft female vocals has enhanced the lyrical sensuality of the song too. the sampling/rhythm like fluid distortions in the first interlude is also pretty unique. any comments ?

This is also a song which I really enjoyed working in. The rhythm is not sampled but rather programmed and I've used the arppegiator stuff which makes you feel as if it is sampled.
I loved making the interludes and tried my best to give the feel of dad's 80's in a modern way. I think that I may go deeper into this kind of feel.
Karthik did try his best to bring out that metallica kind of singing into this song as I had intended to and I kept on saying "more...more...more now!!!". He might have hated me for this, but finally it came out good !

in a lighter vein, was afghan desathu or kabul pradesathu considered for lyrics - for technically - kabul is not a desam , atleast as yet!

well i guess you could also say kabulin desathu making it sound like the country where you can find kabul....etc. but these weren't discussed

dappangathu/gaana songs are part and parcel of Kollywood products. atleast in this case, it can be partially justified, what with singara chennai being arguably the gaana capital of the world. some of your recent movies also have been having them ?
do you like the opportunities of composing them ?

I am trying my best to make different dapaanguthu songs as well! Considering the budget for sennakunni I had to stick to the traditional style.Wait for THE best in my future projects!

any specific reason for harish raghavendra being chosen for this song ? is it his gaana song ?

After recording this song, we had to call a singer to finish it off. That night at the studio I'd called up Harish at around 10pm to come to the studio immediatly and sing this song for me. I played him the song and asked him to follow exactly as I had sung in the track version as I had to leave the studio and meet people who had come to chennai to see me. He agreed and was there till 1:00 a.m in the morning to finish the song. Only later, I came to know the he had got married just a day previous to the recording and I felt really bad about making him work at an odd hour despite him being a newlywed, and I did apologize to him for that. He was however cool about it and in fact, pretty happy about getting a song from me the next day of his marriage.

vanthaarai vaazhavaikkum : arrangements are mostly electronic percussions and flute. any specific reason to make dr.ilayaraja sing the song ? does he believe that chennai gave him the life/success as mentioned in the song ?

The reason behind me requesting my dad to sing this song was because of the persistence of my producer. He just said he would shelve the project if they can't get dad to sing the song. He waited for a long time until dad said "ok". We had composed this song even before thinking of dad for it. I had to change the pitch and other stuff for dad to sing in it. The quality kind of suffered a little because of that but after dad singing it, came back to life. All of us believe that chennai is giving us great oppurtunities and I believe dad might think the same.