Striking the right note
Rising high
Vijay Prakash has been a part of the Oscar-winning ‘Jai Ho!’ He also has several other accomplishments to his credit. Bindu Gopal Rao speaks to the singer on his musical journey so far.
Did you know that the Oscar winning anthem Jai Ho from the runaway hit Slumdog
Millionaire actually has a Karnataka connection?
Surprised? Don’t be. Vijay Prakash, one of the four singers of this song, hails from Mysore and has lent his baritone to the high-pitched Jai Ho interludes in the song.
Music has been in his genes as both his parents are musicians and his grandfather a Harikathe vidwan. “I started training in Carnatic classical music even before I
realised how old I was — maybe I was just 4 or 5 then. It was in school that I started taking singing seriously. I used toparticipate in several competitions. Back then, radio was big and I also developed a taste for the film music parallel. In my college days I was part of the NCC and this gave me an opportunity to not just travel across the country but also listen to folk music from different regions, thereby igniting an interest in different genres of music.”
Incidentally, Vijay Prakash dropped out of engineering after his first semester to pursue a career in music. He then moved to Mumbai and joined Suresh Wadkar’s music school and started training in Hindustani classical and light music like ghazals. It was here that Sonu Nigam spotted him and asked him to participate in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. To sustain himself, he started doing voice-overs for advertisements and singing jingles.
His vocals impressed A R Rehman, who offered him a chance to sing in Swades. The journey has continued since then and he has sung songs in several Indian and even foreign languages. He has lent his voice to hit numbers for movies like Blue, Yuvvraaj, Swades, Kaal, Lakshya, Matrubhoomi, Tere Naam, Cheeni Kum and Raavan, among several others. He has also hosted the Kannada reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa on Zee Kannada, apart from doing fusion shows with Ustad Zakir Hussain.
And if you think singing in many languages can be quite challenging, he has a different take. “I love languages. In fact, I have a passion for languages, which
ensures that I enjoy the song naturally. I guess it has to do with my curiosity to learn different languages — never really found it tough.”
Any conversation with him can never be complete without asking him about Jai Ho. He adds, with just a touch of nostalgia, “Frankly, when we were recording this song, we never imagined that it would reach the heights it did. I had a great time since A R Rehman is not just a genius composer, but a great human being too. Working with him is always a pleasure. It took me an hour to realise that I was part of an Oscar winning song after I heard the announcement. Jai Ho changed my life and the way people started perceiving my work.”
Steps ahead
Commenting on the spate of reality shows whose winners seem to disappear sooner than they arrive, he has a word of caution. “I think it’s important that you realise that music is a serious profession and you must not give up or become impatient. It is important that you work hard and practice every day. Learning should never stop and you must never get carried away with instant fame.”
This talented singer admires Shankar Mahadevan for his ability to handle multiple genres with equal aplomb and is now all set to get into composing music. He has chosen a Kannada movie to make his debut as a composer — Shivaraj Kumar’s Andar Bahar. “I am very excited as I think every musician is also a composer. I gave the nod, as the story is thrilling and the situations are amenable to weaving songs of several shades and multiple emotions. The songs will have a contemporary feel and I am hoping people will enjoy it when it releases later this year.”
His platter is full with several Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Hindi songs in the offing. The singer has a website that his fans, Vivek Uchil and Shaila, built and maintain, and where he posts all his songs. Through this website, he also has hopes of releasing a few of his private numbers and albums.
With the explosion of internet technology, he feels he has had an amazingly positive impact on the music scenario, as today, access to music across different countries is possible.
The affable singer is content with the way his career has panned out and hopes to do more in the days to come, including learning the nuances of western classical music. Like he says, “I want to reinterpret my music and my fans should always be able to find something new in my music.”
Well, ‘Jai Ho’ to that!
