Ellorukkum Vanakkam! Namma Chennai Chance-eyilla, proud to be a Chennaite, we did a song way back in 2014 for the Times of India and it was a wonderful campaign celebrating the city. Chennai is very close to me, and I have lived all my life here.

I owe a lot to Chennai for providing be the right stage, right opportunities, right exposure to different forms of music at the right time and great recognition all the time as a part of my musical journey. Like every aspiring musician I crave for bigger platforms and Chennai kept giving me those one after another right from the time I was a school kid to now and I am sure the musical city has lots in store for me in the days to come.

I started playing the piano when I was very young, I used to play in city clubs like the boat club, gymkhana club to entertain people.  I was very tiny then probably shorter than the piano, in fact Superstar mentioned it on stage during the Petta audio launch. My first big stage happened was when I was in my 1st standard, I was 6 years old. It was in PSBB where I did my schooling in the anniversary function which used to be celebrated in a very grand manner. The school gave a lot of importance to cultural events especially classical art forms. This happened in Kamarajar Arangam in front of packed house of students and parents. lights went off and they brought the keyboard to the stage, then I entered a tiny boy half the size of the keyboard, I was able to clearly hear the murmur in the audience on What’s happening on stage as the school allows solo performance only after 4th standard and all toddlers used to perform as a group. In an event that had seen only classical music played, I started playing the opening song BGM from Rajinikanth’s film Muthu that set the crowd roaring, and everyone enjoyed it. This was one of the most memorable moment in my life that I still remember every minute of it.

From there I went on to be a part of the prestigious Bhajans group in PSBB, the group had 10-12 members with classical accompaniments like the Mridhangam and Violin. I was a western pianist and till then I had only listened to Carnatic music and haven’t played much. The Bhajans group used to participate in a lot of prestigious competitions like the Tambra’s, the Bhaktha Swara conducted by music sabhas in the city across the year, the competition used to be very fierce with highly talented groups from other city schools battling it out to win places. I was inducted into the group to see if that will change the musicality of the output and I started playing Jazz Chords on top of the Bhajans and it worked for us. I enjoyed travelling with the group to a lot of sabhas that gave be a sensibility of Carnatic music.

In high school we formed our own fusion band and started playing in “Kalyana Kutcheris” (Wedding Kutcheris). Wedding shows used to be all over the city, and we had a lot of fun travelling to places in the outskirts which I hadn’t heard of till then. Being high school kids that was more a source of pocket money for us. More importantly it gave us a platform to experiment our own compositions in front of a smaller audience, in fact we started playing our own compositions to differentiate from other bands which used to play only film music. It was highly appreciated and few of them became popular among the audience who started recommending us to their friends, in those days social media was not a huge phenomenon so we grew on word of mouth. As we gained popularity, we slowly moved from weddings in the outskirts to weddings that happened in the heart of the city.

Then I joined BCom in Loyola college where I was a part of the college band “Circuit”, like any other college band even today, IIT Saarang was a dream stage for us. In my three years in college, we participated all the three years, and we came on top in the first two years except for the final year where we came 2nd. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to IIT Madras campus to get inspired to study there, for me it was a pride factor to get into the campus and come back with recognition. IIT Saarang was a big dream and mostly we had a strong team, luckily for me both my school and college were very culturally oriented. For me Loyola and MCC had the best of musicians in college. After the third year where we came 2nd, I completed college then the magical “Kolaveri di” happened and the next year I was called as a chief guest to the same event at IIT, that was a very emotional moment for me, in fact the “Open Air Theatre (OAT)” in IIT Madras is a very emotional stage in my musical journey. As a band we used to be in all the major cultural fests that used to happen in the city like MCC Deepwoods and more.

As a musician the sound of “Thapattam” connects be back to my roots which is Chennai, though it’s a village folk artform I feel it connects very well with Chennai and I always use it as a part of my Chennai slang songs

To mention a special spot in the city, it will be a little cliché to mention the Marina, but I have an emotional connect to it. We always compose songs during the night after completing the days song we generally drive to the Marina at midnight, we know it’s not allowed but we somehow browse through and reach our favourite parking spot which is in turn our lucky listening spot and listen to the days composition which has worked wonders till date.

As a part of films, I have done a few city songs, in fact before Chance-eyilla we did Chennai city gangster. Chance-eyilla being an independent single, built completely as a tribute to Chennai, the city I belong to, the city I love the most is a very special album in my career. I was travelling to the US last month, where I met a Chennai native living in Las Vegas who said he feels very emotional every time he listens to the song, it’s been 5 years we made the song and it’s still connecting with Chennaites around the world is something that gives me immense happiness. In fact, composing chance-eyilla has only further enhanced by love and connect with the city.

I owe a lot to this city for inspiring me so much musically, starting from listening to Kutcheris in sabhas when I was a kid to listening to gana songs in the bus when I was in college everything about this city has inspired me to take up music as a career. Not just me this city inspires each and every one it has, and it gets and for me inspiring is a characteristic of Chennai. The song was a tribute to this great city.