Be it Naina da Kasoor, Halla Bol, or the recent RRR, Amit Trivedi, who is one of the best musicians we have in the industry, has mastered the craft of transforming people’s lives with his melodic music. The Pioneer’s Tejal Sinha connects with him for an exclusive tete-a-tete about music, life, and more.
Music is like a magic key that opens up a smeared heart. In fact, the best musicians are those who reach the depths of your heart with a gleaming note. Amit Trivedi is one of the best musicians we have in the industry and has mastered the craft of transforming people’s lives with his melodic music.
Looking back at his track-by-track discography, right from his debut with Aamir to his recent blockbusters including RRR, Qala, Badhaai do, Doctor G, and Mrs. Chatterjee Vs. Norway, to name a few, the graph has just gone up and up, bringing to us marvellous hits for a perfect playlist that strikes the right chords for us. Another recent song of the Naina da Kasoor artiste that definitely needs a special mention and has received tremendous praise is Halla Bol, the anthem song for Rajasthan Royals, and why not? The IPL fever has lead-off. The Love You Zindagi tunesmith had collaborated once again with his ‘Chaudhary’ folk singer Mame Khan.
We couldn’t hold on to our excitement as we connected with the connoisseur to know more about the collaboration, his musical creativity, his desire to work down south, and more.
“I’ve had a wonderful working relationship with Mame Khan,” remarked the Namo Namo singer, who has known the folk singer for more than 10 years now. “I have had the privilege of working with such a great artist in the past. It was once again my pleasure to collaborate with him on this Rajasthan Royals anthem, and when I was told that it was me and Mame Khan, I was very happy to know about that, and the song was created keeping him and Rajasthan Royal in mind,” zealously shared the award-winning artiste.
It is no surprise that he is one of the most industrious musicians in the industry. His work surely speaks much of it! He doesn’t confine himself to a particular musical genre. We’re not saying it for the sake of saying it. This can be seen from his recent association with Royal Stag Boombox. Enunciating about what according to him makes the combination of Bollywood and hip-hop such a good one, he shared, “Well, indifference to music, I can say it’s an amalgamation of voices and the ‘desi tadka’ and ‘masala Bollywood’ and when they meet the hip-hop world, it is all about poetry, rapping, rhythm embroidery, and melodic masala music of Bollywood.”
Creativity doesn’t wait for the perfect moment. As an artist, it’s up to you to bring that perfect moment to life through your creativity. Looking at the creativity with which the Meethi Boliyaan vocalist makes his music and is tremendously loved by the audience, including us (wink), we asked him about how he relates his creativity to the director’s vision and the genre of the film. “A lot of research, thoughts, discussions, and back-end work goes through, and a lot of work happens back and forth,” he gleefully shared. He further continued, “Depending on the views, they may set it in some period era or in some separate location like Bengal or Rajasthan. Depending on genre-wise, if it’s a romance, action, or drama. And if it’s a biopic, these factors come into play, and that really defines how the music will be approached. And of course, filmmaking has always been a director’s medium. So whatever direction they take me, I just flow in that direction. I’ve always done that. And this flow makes a decision: if he says, I’m good at the east, I’ll go east; or if he says, Go to the west, I’ll do that, of course, with my expertise.”
Apart from being one of the musicians who’s very much adored in Bollywood, he is also on a quest to make a strong mark down the south. Oh, a correction! It’s all over—North, South, East, and West. In 2019, he made his Telugu debut in the Chiranjeevi starrer Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy. After his debut with the film, he’s looking forward to working on more projects down south. But “Somehow it is not happening. Maybe they didn’t like what I’d done. Or I don’t know what the reason is for why I would love to do more because I did collaborate on RRR with Rajamouli, but as a composer, I would like to do more because I genuinely love that industry. I love the people, their work ethics, and the films there. Everything I love a lot. There’s a lot to learn about the South Indian film industry, whether it’s in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, or Malayalam. So I’m looking forward to doing more if that happens in the future. Music has no such language. There is no such boundary there. Be it south, north, east, or west, wherever the music is required, I am happy to contribute.”
The music industry is evolving faster than ever. Each year, new platforms and mediums skyrocket to prominence, minting household names and reshaping the way audiences connect with artists. The landscape for commercial Hindi music has changed drastically with the focus on streams and YouTube views. While some songs find popularity through short-form videos, the number of reels made using a song is a barometer of its success. The virtuoso couldn’t agree much, as he said, “Unfortunately, yes.” While the number game has been a trend, it eventually happened to a lot of his songs too. “Fortunately, both my old and new catalogues have a lot of old and new songs that I’ve just seen go viral on reels.”And when I check on my streams, the numbers jump like crazy. That is the reality that is there, good or bad; I don’t know about that. We are just flowing with the times. The nature of time is offering us this point; maybe in the future, they’ll do something else. So we have to embrace it and keep going.”
Looking at the other side of the coin, with the number of views and a particular song being a big ‘social media trend’, there are also songs that go underrated. Expressing his sitch during those bad days, he said, “It’s not just one song or two songs. There are so many things that I do and so many songs that I make hardly anything work. That really breaks my heart, and I don’t know why or where I went wrong? And that is when you go into that self-doubt mode, questioning yourself, Am I good enough? Is it good? Not good. wise enough? We live in a very different world. There’s a lot of content out there. There is way too much competition out there. Way too much content has been released on a regular basis. For things to stand out, there are a lot of factors that are going to come into play these days. Social media and reels are the factors in which one will go viral. What will happen? We have no idea. I have seen the best of the songs—musically, lyrically, and arrangement-wise, they’re just highly superior songs. But nobody knows about it. And there are very mediocre songs; I’m just wondering why this song is a hit. So it’s very rare. There is no way to test a song where you can see it—is it good or bad? Or is it a hit or a flop? It’s a very strange world that we have entered, and it can be highly demotivating at times. When my songs work or any artist works at that point, it gives happiness to them. I think it’s a gamble. What will work with whom and where? Nobody knows.”
Going ahead, he is once again going to collaborate with the talented filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane for Amazon Prime’s Jubilee, after Udaan and Lootera.
“As a solo, I had a blast doing that. I always love working with Vikram; he is my favourite director and human being. I’m a little proud of Jubilee and a little proud of another project, Ghoomar, by my other favourite composer, R. Madhavan,” wrapped the proficient musician.
