Hitting a catchy note

For Malayalis, the New Year kicked off with the release of the song ‘Pande Nee Ennil Unde’ from the movie Kalyanam. The song was quick to find a spot on the trending list on YouTube. Soon after it came the teaser of the song ‘Dhrithangapulakithan’ from the same movie, which has actors Dulquer Salmaan and Gregory Jacob crooning to it, and soon enough this teaser found itself trending too. This one was enjoying the #3 spot on the trending list.

For Prakash Alex, this was more than what he had expected when the New Year began.

The offer came to Prakash Alex the very next day after his wedding. He  was asked to compose music for a movie, which was yet to be christened back then. “This is actually a three-year-long planning,” he says. “The enquiry for this project came to me the day after my marriage, but back then the movie was not named Kalyanam.”

“I have been a keyboard programmer for the past 12 years. I have associated with a number of music directors. I still associate with them, in fact I am speaking from Gopi Sunder’s studio,” says Prakash.

The song ‘Pande Nee Ennil Unde’ has another story to it. “I had initially sung it, to give it for shoot. It so happened that people got comfortable with it, after hearing it over and over again during the shoot. But I was least confident about having my vocals in the final version of the song. I struggled a lot to convince the director to let another singer lend voice for the song. We tried it out with a number of debutants. But that did not work out. Finally, just a few days before the audio launch we caught hold of Siddharth. And on December 31, we recorded the song with him and his voice suited Shravan.”

Prakash is all set and waiting for the release of the song ‘Dhrithangapulakithan’ sung by Dulquer and Gregory. “I enjoyed working with them. The song is a fun number. This is the first song  I worked on for this movie. Since I work with Gopi Sunder I have seen him come and record at the studio. He (Dulquer) was not very tense. He was handed over the song much in advance, so there was no confusion at all. The recording was very comfortable. Gregory too joined in later, he performed a rap version.”

The song is gearing up for release as the interview was being held.  “It will release in few hours,” says Prakash. “I am a little tense,” he laughs.