“Y ou’re lifting the curtains on your day, idly clearing beer cans off the kitchen table. Then, as you dump the last few hours of your life into a homeless carton, you realise it was exactly one year ago today that you moved into this apartment. Or exactly two years ago that you broke up with this girl. Or five years ago that you graduated. Imagine a soundtrack to this moment. That's what ‘Songversations’ is about,” says Nitin Nath, the host of the 30-minute show on Kappa TV that gets up close with a musician. A graduate of Symbiosis, Nitin studied films and advertisement and as an extension of that decided to work in television.
Excerpts from an interview with Nitin...
Kappa and I
I am part of a flagship company, Aum-i Artistes that provides content for Kappa TV. We are also into artiste management and event management too.
Most of our programmes for Kappa promotes indie music. So there is ‘Music Mojo’, ‘Mojo Rising’… We have introduced many artistes and bands, including Thaikkudam Bridge, who are now big names on the music scene. I feel that ‘Songversations’ continues that aspect of featuring artistes in a different format.
‘Songversations’
I made the title myself. It was conceptualised as a show that told you the story behind a song. We are passionate about indie music and have been promoting it on many of our shows. The idea behind ‘Songversations’ was to feature the rock stars of indie music who may not been familiar to many viewers.
The two-month show has featured musicians who are legends in their own right; artistes such as Bruce Lee Mani, Suraj Mani, John P. Varkey, John Antony (Karnatriix), Ameet Thomas (Junkyard Groove), Bijibal and Harish Sivaramakrishnan (Agam). We also plan to turn the arc lights on up and coming stars.
Flow of conversation
I am not an ‘anchor anchor’. It is a freewheeling conversation between two music buffs and I host the musician we are featuring in his/her comfort zone. So we talk about a song, how it was created and its place in the musician’s journey and what it meant to him. Viewers get to see and hear the musician and his music.
You get an idea of where he had been, where he is now and where he will be tomorrow. There is no script and the whole programme is improvised. These are guys who are spontaneous and if we were to give them a scripted show, they would probably feel hemmed in but in this format, they are free to go where the music leads. It is one long take without any cuts. We record for about 90 minutes and then it is edited to make it crisp.
Snapshots of melody
I feel that the show changes with each musician we feature. It acquires the feel and personality of the person and his music. I am sure if we were to talk to a metal band, the episode would reflect his music and his personality. So each episode reflects a musician’s personal discovery of his songs.
What comes next?
See, the entire team is passionate about what we do. I work very closely with Sumesh Lal, who's like a partner-in-art to me. He is my mentor. Eventually, we hope to move into fiction in many formats.
‘Songversations’ airs on Kappa TV on Sundays at 7.30 p.m.
