If you’re the kind that sings into the mug in the bathroom, looking at yourself in the mirror and dreaming of making it big in the movies some day, there is an anthem for you now that reflects your feelings.
From Mug To Mike, a platform for bathroom singers, has come up with the Bathroom Singers’ Anthem. “I always wanted to do a song that could reflect what every bathroom singer felt. But I wanted a modern and contemporary song…till now the famous Hindi film song Thande thande paani se was all we had,” says Sunil Koshy, founder of From Mug to Mike, who conceptualised the anthem.
The music video (which has all the singers from his workshops singing with buckets and mugs against the backdrop of a graphically generated bathroom!) was launched recently by noted playback singer K.S. Chithra, in Chennai at her studio.
“ Lekar Mug Ko/ Kyun naachne tumm lag jate ho/ Tub ko dholak/ Bajaane kyun lag jaate ho/ Public ko saath leke/ Gana apna sunate hai/ Mug ko chuck karke/ Grab the mike karte hai ” goes the enthusiastic anthem. “I just wanted to convey that singing is good. The world of music may have become a competitive one, but music has a higher purpose — singing makes you happy. That should be understood and people should sing more,” says Sunil. He has trained over 3000 passionate singers in the last two and a half years, and helped them record in professional recording studios, to keep the promise of holding their hand all the way from the mug in the bathroom to the mike in the studio. He has conducted over 200 workshops in Bengaluru, Chennai, Trivandrum and Kochi.
He zeroed in on an Indipop tune to keep the song peppy and foot-tapping. “We debated a lot about whether we should do the song in Hindi or multiple-languages. Hindi, we felt, would have a greater reach. Electric and bass guitars have been used in and we have classical bits in between. We used a lot of live musicians because then the sound is richer than if we use keyboard music. There’s no match to live music and these musicians are guys who play for Illayaraja and Rahman,” says Sunil. The song is composed by music director and sound engineer P.G. Ragesh. The lyrics are by Abdul Akhtar, and the video was shot by Deepak Fain. There were two big challenges, says Sunil — the lyrics were difficult because it was based on a concept rather than being more generic like a love song. The other was that most of his students were singing an original track for the first time. The singers featured in the anthem, include, apart from Sunil Koshy, Nidhi Srivastava, Pratibha Priyadarshini, Geraldine Shalini R, Manoj Baruah, Mohan Kumar B, Dr. Jai Ganesh, Kiran Krishnaiah, and Vishwajith Bharadwaj.
The song was recorded and mixed in Chithra’s studio — Krishna Digidesign — at Chennai (where Sunil usually conducts his workshops) a few weeks ago. The music video caught the attention of Chithra and her husband Vijayashankar, the CEO of Audiotracs, Chithra’s official YouTube channel. They thought the music video was “a brilliant idea” and immediately proposed that the Bathroom Singers’ Anthem be launched on Audiotracs. It’s the first video that is not Chithra’s own, to be launched there.
“I wanted to create a song that captures the soul of every bathroom singer!” concludes Sunil.
The song can be watched on the link http://youtube/ K9q-gWG2M6A
