Mumbai, Feb 3 Playback singer Shalmali Kholgade, who is known for songs like ‘Pareshaan’, ‘Balam Pichkari’, ‘Latt Lag Gayi’, and others, has shared what led to her entry in Hindi film music.
Shalmali recently spoke with IANS, about her journey of 13 years in film music, her rendezvous with the band culture, and how the opportunity came knocking her doors after she just finished her college.
The singer walked down the memory lane, and recollected how she got ‘Pareshaan’ from the Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor-starrer ‘Ishaqzaade’.
She told IANS, “Amit Trivedi (music composer) at the time was looking for a fresh voice. And his producer or engineer in his studio at the time, Anjo John, was a college friend's boyfriend. So he called me because we knew each other also and said, ‘Amit Trivedi is looking for a fresh voice. Do you have any demos? Just send me anything, even like sing into your phone and send it to me’”.
Shalmali was applying to colleges abroad at that time, and she didn't have enough funds to go in person and audition for those admission interviews. So she was sending demos to them on video. That’s where things worked out for her courtesy the nascent stage of information transfer and digitisation.
She shared, “So I said, ‘I have like two English demos. Should I send those?’ He said, ‘Whatever, just send it fast because he's looking for a voice now. So send those which were two English songs’. One was ‘Valerie’ by Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson. And one was ‘Summertime’, which is like your jazz standard. So I sent those two demos. Amit Trivedi thought there was something in my voice that he called me to sing ‘Pareshaan’. And he literally made me stand right at the place between the staircase and the elevator. We just stood there and he made me sing, ‘Main pareshaan, pareshaan, pareshaan, pareshaan, Kinare pe khadi’. He said, ‘Ye chaar baar gao’. And I was like, ‘oh, okay’”.
She continued, “I sang it, and he asked if I would be free the other day for a session to record the song. I had just finished my third year at college at that time. I had nothing to do. So I was like, ‘haan, haan, bilkul, I'm free’. So I landed up at a studio the next day and we did not record ‘Pareshaan’ that day. We recorded the Red FM jingle on that day”.
“So it just, that was the day or that was the time in my life when I was like, ‘What’s happening? What’s this new world of studio music? Oh that’s how it’s done! This is how people work, you know. And yeah, that was the beginning”, she added.
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