‘Ilaki vannaadi...’ Resmi Sateesh sings, swaying to the rhythm of the drum and the guitar. The tempo picks up and it touches a crescendo.
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At a studio near Marunthankuzhy, Resmi and three musicians are practising hard for the big day – the launch of Resmi’s new band, ReSa. The four-piece band will première on the final day of the Pagan Fest, organised by Pagan Foundation in Kochi from October 7 to 11.
ReSa stands for the musical notes, Re, Sa, says Resmi who shot to fame with her earthy song in Urumi and later her acting prowess in 22 Female Kottayam . Resmi says that she wouldn’t want to restrict her band to a particular genre.
“The songs we play would come under world music. Our repertoire will have original songs with a folk flavour, including thottampattu and nagapattu (for the snake gods) and electro-based songs as well,” says Resmi.
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The musicians are Vinod Sreedevan (lead guitar), Arunkumar (drums) and Balachandran a.k.a Balu (bass guitar). “They are the three core members. However, for each performance we plan to bring in other musicians specialising in playing a particular instrument, say pulluvanveena, udukku, edakka, kombu, kuzhal....,” she adds.
A sound engineer, Resmi says that the band has been on her mind for sometime. “I wanted it to be unique. A music band is expected to bring out independent music, but nowadays groups singing film songs also call themselves music bands. We will present only original songs, eight of them. I don’t want to bracket them into ethnic folk or alternative folk. Each member will try to bring in a new sound to our production. Also, we are working on having different concepts for different tracks. Hard rock gives me the same trance-like feel as a nagapattu,” she says. Engandiyoor Chandrasekharan, Madhu Narayanan and Saju Sreenivas are the lyricists of the numbers.
Vinod points out how we have a rich treasure of folk songs that are an intrinsic part of our soundscape. “We are trying to present them in a unique way by blending in traditional instruments for that edgy and native sound,” says Vinod. However Arun adds that since film music has a wide reach many bands try to reinvent those songs to catch the attention of listeners.
It is a big challenge to take original songs to the audience.
The musicians are keeping their fingers crossed because they are directly going live at the event without any audio launch prior to that.
“However we have a lot of support from friends in the music circle. Be it Rex Vijayan or Mother Jane they are there with suggestions. I am also happy that we have got this space to jam. It is actually Vinod’s studio,” says Resmi. Meanwhile she is planning to register a new company, which will take up music production.
She hopes to associate with other artistes and also a create a music archive as part of the venture.