“There’s a time for everything. You can’t force things to happen, certainly not when it’s a creative process,” Farhan Akhtar says, when we begin talking about his independent music album Echoes , which will be unveiled on April 12. His acting and playback singing debut happened in 2008 with Rock On! If it took 11 years for him to have an independent music album, he explains, “An artist needs to be at a point where he or she feels that the work can be shared with the world. To me, this felt like the right time for Echoes .”
Emotional connect
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Among the 11 singles, the oldest is Seagull , which stemmed from a poem Farhan had written 25 years ago. A relationship has ended and Seagull remembers the brighter side, of moments worth cherishing. “When I began working on Echoes in 2015, this poem kept coming back to me. I wanted to put music to this poem and see how it would turn out,” says Farhan.
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Farhan mentions that Tommaso’s approach towards Echoes was to make its lyrics stand out. “He felt it’s a songwriter’s album and the designed the music to support the lyrics,” he says. One of the songs, ‘ Be all you can be’ , seems like an extension of his campaign MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination). He agrees and adds that it’s also a song he wrote for his daughters and other young women, goading them to be free and fearless: “We live in an age where, probably because of social media and other reasons, we constantly seek validation. I wanted to tell them to stay strong and believe in their ideas and opinions.”
As Farhan talks about the album, I am reminded of a conversation with the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio, during which Shankar had commended Farhan for his musical prowess and had stated that composing is easier when a director is clued into music. Reminiscing his early collaboration with the trio, Farhan says, “The driving force of music for Dil Chahta Hai were Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy, while the driving force of its lyrics was my father (Javed Akhtar). I had to ensure that the music progressed in a manner that helped the narrative. But I must state that the most enjoyable process in filmmaking, for me, is when I am at the recording studio, collaborating and watching music happen.”
Finally, what does Farhan have to say about parodies on the web and the radio where his voice and style of singing get parodied? “Imitation is the best form of flattery,” he laughs.
Before winding up, he shares that Echoes will not be a one-off album; there will be more: “Not immediately though, since I have my hands full with film projects. There’s a lot of material and I’m 100% sure I will return to the recording studio with these songs.”