An Independent musician, Neha Karode, who is known for her musical series called Bandish Based Originals brings director Anubhav Sinha’s words to life in the songs ‘O Mama’ and ‘Rabbit’ from the Ayushman Khurana starrer Anek.
We live in a time where remakes and remixes are constantly finding their way into film music albums as ‘safe bets’ and sureshot hits, but Anubhav Sinha has dared to step away from convention. In a Hindi Movie Album of 5 songs, he has chosen to back 4 songs which aren’t in Hindi at all. There is 1 Kashmiri song, 1 Naga song, 2 English songs and 1 Hindi-Rap song sung by Sunidhi Chauhan.
The former are all by indie or folk musicians. While Sinha’s writing is a homage to the rebellious and soulful tracks of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Karode channels the influence of one of her idols Joan Baez into the tracks.
She also proves her versatility performing in the R&B and Rock genres which are starkly different from her own musical endeavours featuring ragas and age old bandishes based on Hindustani Classical Music.
The album of Anek, a film on the relationship between the north east and the rest of India, is composed by prominent music director Anurag Saikia, who puts to use his north eastern roots by seamlessly merging plenty of local instruments into the soundscape making it as musically and culturally wholesome as can be.
You can find the music of Anek here.
Neha has had 3 Bollywood playback releases within the month of June itself. Her songs include two English songs in Anek, as mentioned above, and one fun Hindi dance number called ‘Nasha Ishq Ka’ in Shilpa Shetty starrer Nikamma.
Karode says, “I grew up listening to Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and the Beatles and the music of Anek borrows its influences from the folksy rock era which had such a huge impact on the politics and movements of the day.”
Hearing ‘Nasha Ishq Ka’ after ‘Oh Mama’ makes a strong case for recognising Karode’s versatility as a vocalist as she brings in the swag with absolute command in this song composed by Vipin Patwa, written by Kumaar and co-sung by Stebin Ben. While on the independent music front, Neha has been making some creative raag oriented fusion music under the series, ‘Bandish Based Originals’, it has been very interesting to see her take on the mainstream film music space with such a big bang. Next in her original series is a malkauns bandish influenced track called ‘Koyaliya Bole’ with singer Abhay Jodhpurkar.
