The music of Yatra is earning praise and making people curious about its music director K. It’s actually Krishna Kumar, who had also worked for Ghazi and Anando Brahma . He had never been addressed as Krishna Kumar, even in school and college it was always KK. When the director of his debut film in Tamil suggested he change his name, he dropped one K. “When someone says Krishna Kumar, I feel it is slightly odd. The response is not immediate,” he says.
K has worked in Tamil and Malayalam cinema as well, across different genres; Yatra is apparently the first time he has worked on a biopic. He terms it the biggest film in his career, in budget and scale. “I have to thank director Mahi Raghav for trusting me. I did my own bit of research on late Rajashekara Reddy though Mahi narrated the story a couple of times. I got to know more about him before embarking on the project. I tried acquainting myself on rallies and other aspects on YouTube. The central character in the story is very important. You will find a lot of reflection happening in the film, he turned out to be a really mass person, a cool man with swag. Not what you expect in a regular commercial film. His coolness or swagger is something you will identify when you see his heroic moments.”
There are six songs, one of them is choreographed as a dance sequence and the others drive the story forward. K also worked on the background score. He avers, “It is my first experience with BGM, I enjoyed it. I always wanted to record with a huge orchestra. For Yatra we got to do it on a big scale; we went to Macedonia and got it recorded by their people. We recorded a 55 piece orchestra, that is a huge one. I did my best from whatever I could understand of the lyrics, the tune goes first here and then the lyrics come.” He adds that Sirivennela Seetarama Sastry who wrote most of the songs, explained every line in the lyrics to him.
One song was written and sung by folk singer Penchal Das. K says, “I am interested in such folk songs. I was merely arranging Penchal Das’ number, like I’ve done with many folk singers earlier. Folk singers are spontaneous, so it is challenging to work with them. Penchal Das is a very good singer and a batik artist; it was interesting to interact with him.”
He is blown away by the way the legendary SP Balasubrahmanyam rendered Pallelo Kala Undhi Pantallo Kalimi Undhi. Another song was recorded with Kala Bhairava.
K found the setting of Yatra fresh and a happy experience. He shares, “The last one year, I was travelling with the team. It has come out very well. For a composer, when he sees a few scenes it affects him. It happened to me the first two times… like during the helicopter scene. I am not a hard core follower of YSR but I was affected by it. So imagine what kind of impact it has on others.”
From here, K moves on to a couple of Tamil films and one Sinhalese movie.
