These are not the most exciting times for film music in Malayalam. Gone are the melodies.
Composers like Vidyasagar, Ouseppachan, and Ramesh Narayan are almost anachronism now; they represent the time when a song had a space of its own and often it had a life way beyond the film it featured in. These days, a song is mostly used in a Malayalam film as a backdrop of a series of short scenes. “A composer is not asked to give a melodious song, befitting a certain situation,” says Sreevalsan J. Menon, who made a most promising debut with Laptop in 2008.
That film may have failed to impress, but its songs did, especially the haunting Ilam neela neela mizhikal… It was incredibly melodious and sung well, by Sreevalsan himself.
“These days you rarely get an opportunity to work in a film that has good scope for music,” says the composer-singer, who was in Kozhikode for presenting a Carnatic vocal concert. “So I was glad when director Shaji N. Karun asked me to score the music for Swapaanam .”
And he came up with a memorable score too, with songs based in classical music, in which he has had close to two decades of training under Neyyattinkara Vasudevan, one of the finest Carnatic vocalists ever from Kerala.
“I owe my career in music to Neyyattinkara, who made me join him on stage within a few days of my becoming his disciple,” he says.
“I also try to make my classical music pure, like he used to do.”
Sreevalsan is one of the few musicians who could make a mark both in classical and light music. “That is because I separate the two distinctly,” he says.
It is only one of the aspects of his versatility, though. He is an assistant professor at Kerala Agricultural University, Mannuthy, a former Thrissur district badminton champion and winner of the best actor at the University festival.
