How a Tamil-French music album came about

What happens when French musicians write songs about travelling the world, and Indian composers set those words to music?

How do you compose a song when you can’t understand the words? It isn’t easy, but the students of KM Conservatory of Music found a way. “The lyrics would be in French, and none of us speak French,” grins Aditya Ravindran, singer-composer and a student who was part of a collaboration that led to the creation of Tamil-French music album No Parking .

Ravindran elaborates on the challenges, “When you are composing in a language you know, you know the little things, like which syllable to stress on when saying a word. Here, we didn’t know if we were just making the words sound funny.”

 

But the students found a way to get around this. They had time: the project had begun in August 2017, when three French musicians — Regis Savigny, Lizzy Ling and Julie Bonnafont, who together comprise the Collectif A Contresens — approached the music school with a project. The idea was to lend Indian tunes to French words, and create soundtracks which would be new for Indian and French ears alike.

And just like that, 15 students dedicated an entire semester to this project: attending workshops, composing, collaborating and eventually recording. Because of the language barrier, much of the communication across continents had to be done through voice files, and a lot of time was spent dissecting things likes pronunciation.

“In our regional languages, the words are closed. But in French, the consonants just dissolve towards the end,” says Karthik Manickavasakam, with a slight frown that hints at the frustration he might have felt through those months of work. But nobody’s complaining now, especially not Ravindran and Manickavasakm, being the only two who were selected go to France for the album release, and tour the country with Collectif A Centresens. They gave performance halls, music shops and schoolrooms across the French countryside a taste of the fusion sounds of

No Parking , with a liberal serving of popular Tamil tracks and songs from their band Pithukuli on the side.

 

It’s hard to tell what the duo is more chuffed about: their performances around France or the exhilarating months of composition back in Chennai with their KM batchmates. “Everybody was kicked to give their own input,” recalls Manickavasakam, “For example, we found out that one of the sound engineers knew how to play the dholak . So, that was all he did: lend dholak sounds to the tracks that needed it. We took him off sound engineering completely.”

So pahadi folk, Carnatic and even electronic sounds made their way in songs about traffic signals, airport halts and crossing roads. As the project slowly took over their lives for a few months, eventually becoming part of their course work, even more sound engineers and technicians had to pitch in to set a second recording studio, in order to get things done on time.

“In December, 14 songs had to be recorded in 10 days,” says Manickavasakam, adding that usually, recording a single song takes multiple days.

As much as the students enjoyed the process on campus, their visit to France was a whole new experience. “If I had gone to France as a tourist, I wouldn’t have visited the places we visited then,” points out Ravindran, launching into a slew of memories, from teaching schoolchildren Indian classical rhythms to jamming to ‘Urvasi’ in a music store with its owner and some friends, long after closing hours.

The camaraderie that springs from a love for music — any music — is what really stood out for the duo. “We did eight concerts in three weeks, and performed in all kinds of venues. In every performance hall, after the performance, everyone would get together and sit down for a meal. The composer, the janitor, the light and sound technicians, the performers, their friends… everyone would discuss what they liked and didn’t like about the show,” recalls Manickavasakam.

The French tour — a result of the collaborative project between Tamil Nadu Government and the Central State of France — having concluded recently, energies have been shifted towards an Indian leg of the tour. But things may not materialise till early next year. For now, the songs of No Parking are available on iTunes and Saavn.