Singer Sooraj Santhosh is on song! His enviable body of work in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam industry is his calling card. There aren’t any starry airs about this soft-spoken 28-year-old, though. He smiles when you ask him how he feels about going places as the lead singer of Masala Coffee.
He emphasises that his musical journey is not peppered with anything extraordinary. “One thing led to the other, that’s all,” he sums up the journey during a visit to his home in the capital city. Although he is based in Chennai and is busy travelling with his band and recordings, he manages to come home as and when possible.
It is the city that nurtured the musician in him. Although he doesn’t have a musical lineage, his mother Jayakumari’s colleague identified his talent. A school arts festival veteran of sorts, winning prizes in classical music and light music at the state-level for five years as a student of Government Model Boys HSS, he retained his winning track at the university and national-level music competitions.
Sooraj’s guiding star was his guru, flautist Kudamaloor Janardanan. “He happened to judge a music competition in which I participated. When I opted to learn Carnatic vocal from him, many were surprised because he is a flautist. He changed my outlook towards music, and made me confident as a musician. He encouraged me to listen to international music.”
Although he got a job in a bank, Sooraj opted to shift to Chennai after his studies. “My only ambition was to be a good musician. I used to visit Chennai even when I was doing M.Com at Mar Ivanios College. It was during one of those trips that I auditioned for a Telugu film song composed by G.V. Prakash and the next year the film (Darling) was released. So I got my first song during my college days itself.”
That eventually opened the door to playback singing in Telugu, followed by Tamil and Kannada. “I write down the lyrics in Malayalam,” says Sooraj, who has worked with big names such as Ilayaraja, Devi Sri Prasad, D. Imman, Thaman and Yuvan Shankar Raja. “Working for Ilayaraja sir in Kida Poosari Magudi was a different experience. He expects you to sing in the same way he has taught you unlike most composers who give you the freedom to improvise. However I didn’t have any problem with that because he explains everything so well that you just have to follow what he says,” he says.
But why is that we have heard less of him in Malayalam movies? He debuted in Second Show and has sung in only a few movies. Recently we heard him in Kunjiramayanam and Madhura Naranga . “I don’t know. However, I have no regrets because I have never pushed myself to get more songs,” he asserts.
Things might change now that Masala Coffee is on a roll. His song ‘Kaantha’ is a sought-after number at all shows. Two other songs of the band, ‘Vadakkanpattu’ and ‘Odi odi’ are Sooraj’s own compositions. “For me Masala Coffee is not about just one person. Each of us has been trained in different classical styles and when varied styles blend, the result is always different,” he says. The band recently composed the promo song of the Malayalam movie Hello Namaste and also did tracks for the Tamil film, Uriyadi .
The year that went by was special in another way for Sooraj in that he was a member of the first Indian choral group to sing in an Indian language. The venture, ‘Mantra Meets Classic’, an Indo-German collaboration, premiered in Germany in September last year. Sooraj along with two other Indian singers rendered five mantras in choral a cappella style along with The Chamber Choir of Europe, Germany.
“The German choir has the best musicians from across the world. We presented the mantras ‘Shanmuga Kavacham’, ‘Sharavanabhava’, ‘Namachivaya’, ‘Ainthu karanthinai’ and Gayathri mantra under the guidance of Ganesh B. Kumar and Nicholas Matt. I have been working on this for three years. I am not trained in Western classical music, but was able to pick up the nuances by listening to works in that genre,” he says.
Before signing off, Sooraj talks about his dream.
“I want to take our music and language to an international audience. Going abroad and singing for a Malayali audience makes little sense. You say music has no language, but language is a barrier and that has to be broken,” he says.
