Experiments, when attempted, appear to come as a package. Look at Arun Omana Sadanandan's maiden feature film Maanasaandarappetta Yezdi. His story itself is unusual with an Yezdi bike becoming a central character, with comedy and fantasy woven around it. And then he brings veteran guitarist and independent musician Baiju Dharmajan to do the music. In Thiruvananthapuram, doing the final mixing, the former Motherjane man who has been loved for his Carnatic-inspired guitar playing, talks about the ‘totally different’ experience in making music for a film.
“The songs began as background scores, all of them one-and-a-half to two minutes long. But then they developed to songs. It is a village story and the music had to match that,” Baiju says, sitting at the Chitranjali Studio, next to director Arun, cinematographer Akhil, and others. He went with progressive rock, and experimented with electronic music.
Baiju had come into the project through a mutual friend and drummer Arun Kumar. “He was recording sync sound for the film when he heard that the music director, who was initially roped in, had left,” Baiju says. Arun Kumar, who has also written his ebook biography Motherjane: Baiju Dharmajan Diaries, asked if Baiju was interested. And he came.
The songs unsurprisingly come with a different sound, progressive rock in Malayalam cinema being a completely new attempt. Arun the director shows the scenes where the songs come. “It is a story spanning from 1997 to 2015. An Yezdi bike passes through the hands of three owners, and witnesses their stories - the owners played by P Balachandran, Jayan Cherthala and Indrans. Most of the other actors are new, from the Act Lab in Kochi.”
