“Music is about celebrating life and sending a message,” proclaims Sean Roldan, vocalist and guitarist of the popular Tamil band ‘Sean Roldan and Friends.’ Born as Raghavendra to a family of musicians, he decided to go with Sean Roldan as his stage name to break free from his Carnatic image and venture into something new.
With their numbers ‘Mandira’ and ‘Mayakura Poo Vasam’ having gone viral, the band is a well-known name in the city's music circuit today. “I started off as an independent musician, when one day, Pradeep, our slide guitarist, pitched the idea of starting a band to me. I was a bit sceptical at first, because I didn't want to be part of just another festival band. But along with Praveen Sparsh on percussion and Tapas on the drums, we want to come up with socially relevant music that will make a difference,” says Sean, adding that it's hard to fit the band into any particular genre (folk and blues being their favourite), but that they draw their inspiration from Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison.
Sean Roldan also scored the music for the 2014 hit film Vaayai Moodi Pesavum . When asked what it was like to work in the film industry, Sean says while the experience was incredible, he prefers to work as an independent musician. “I stumbled into cinema when Balaji Mohan offered me Vaayai Moodi Pesavum . He was a wonderful director to work with and gave me complete creative freedom. But, to be brutally honest, if someone enters the film industry with the dream of making it big, it will suck all the juice out of them. Unless cinema grows beyond entertainment, it will be really difficult for people to make a career out of it. However, I have great respect for composers of film music. But in the future, I want to score music only for socially relevant films. Music is a huge selling point for films today, so I want to take that responsibility seriously,” says Sean.
What does the future hold for the band? “We are not idealists, but we want to represent young India. Artistes are the guinea pigs of change in society, and we want to make that change through our songs. We intend to stay together for a long time, and want to tour around the country as well. Our last performance was at NH7, in November. We are back in full throttle, and want to give more performances, possibly even street gigs, so we can reach out to people from all walks of life, keeping quality intact.”
Watch Sean Roldan and Friends perform live at Alliance Francaise on May 23 at 6.30 p.m.
