Aslam has been humming ‘Verithanam’ from Bigil for the last couple of weeks. It is the song that has won applause, and fetched him the title winner tag of Zee Tamil’s Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Seniors Season 2.
“This was the first time I was performing in a stadium,” Aslam recalls about the grand finale that took place last week, “It felt terrific.” On the evening of the finals, Aslam performed AR Rahman’s ‘Verithanam’ ( Bigil ) and ‘Santhosha Kaneere’ ( Uyire ), much to the delight of the crowd.
While ‘Santhosha Kaneere’ was relatively easy, ‘Verithanam’ posed a big challenge for Aslam. “It wasn’t easy to convince others, who kept saying that my rendition was too ‘Malayalish’. But I had no intention of changing it since I’m a Vijay fan too, and wanted to sing one of his songs. People might think that it’s easy to deliver since it is a mass number, but the song requires a particular energy level, or else it falls flat,” says the singer.
Aslam is new to the Tamil music scene, having been born and brought up in Kochi. “My first connection with singing was when I went for Carnatic music classes,” he recalls, “I wanted to go for competitions then, and so, used to learn a lot of classical-based songs, like ‘Nagumo’.”
After spending a couple of years of his childhood in Bahrain, Aslam returned to Kerala when he was in Class XII, after which he participated in a couple of reality shows. “I realised that I had to do more commercial, more filmi stuff,” he says. Aslam did well in Indian Idol , where he was placed in the top 30, an experience that he would draw richly from much later on when he participated in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa . “I was pretty confident,” he says.
That confidence showed during the grand finale, which had the who’s who of the film music business among the audience and jury. Music composers Yuvan Shankar Raja and Devi Sri Prasad, who were also the celebrity judges, were among the celebrities who encouraged the 24-year-old singer, who is a big fan of the tunes of Malayalam composers Baburaj master and Johnson.
Post the win, a few composers have already reached out to him for recording sessions. “I’m planning to shift from Kerala to Chennai for good in the near future. I have already recorded two songs for a leading Tamil composer, and am looking to be associated in a bigger way with the Tamil film industry.”
