“Our Movie ’99 Songs’ With Original Scores Is Realistic Yet Fantastic,” Insists Writer-Producer-Maestro A R Rahman Who May ‘Direct’ A Bollywood Movie In Future

Chaitanya  Padukone

At the launch of the spectacular song ‘Jwalamukhi’ from this ready-for-release multilingual Hindi movie ’99 Songs’ produced by ‘living legend’ A R Rahman directed by Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy which also has its ‘original music’ scores for 15 scintillating tracks, scored by the music maestro  himself , the ambience was electrifying. That’s because besides the presence of the sound-wizard Rahman-sir, it was the vibes generated by the screening of the ’99 songs’ movie trailer and the visuals of the song ‘Jwalamukhi’ , that too using the latest ‘Dolby Atmos’ system-. Which proved to be an ecstatic musical audio-visual experience with its supreme clarity of vocals and instrumentals. The romantic musical marks the debut of tall, handsome (Kashmiri) hero Ehan (‘Jay’) Bhat who is cast opposite the Santiago-Caribbean zone born, stunning heroine Edilsy (‘Sophie’) Vargas and the smart dude Tibetan actor Tenzin Dalha. In the supporting  characters,  the Mumbai-based director Vishwesh has cast the senior quintessential beauty Manisha Koirala and Lisa Ray in pivotal roles.    Justifying the intriguing movie-title, story-writer Rahman explains, “The idea for the film came to me on a flight, on the way to Los Angeles (U.S.)-- why don't we write a story like a fairy tale where a musically-passionate guy has to compose 100 songs to woo and win the girl? But then I thought 100 seems too big a number. So we reduced it to 99 songs .

Instead of the hero conventionally bashing up villains and fighting against social obstacles we thought  composing original music (and not recreated remixes) would be a different catalyst-challenge. The film 99 Songs saw its lead actors Ehan Bhat Tenzin Dalha prep-learn to play the piano, and guitar and  (Tenzin) drums for nearly a year at Rahman’s K M Conservatory at Chennai. “ We wanted the instruments-playing on-screen to be realistic and authentic and not faking,” justified director Vishwesh who has inspiring instrumental-musical themes composed by Rahman who has also given his background vocals for the same movie. Referring to Krishnamoorthy, Rahman quipped  "I was franticallylooking for a director and Krishnamoorthy stepped into my orbit and he was just as crazy as me. All the classic stuff  is his and all the masala (spice) is mine. All those music-buffs who keep grousing regarding  the glut of remixed songs can listen to all original tracks in our movie,” says writer-director-sound wizard Rahman . Having directed this hi-tech English virtual reality film Le Musk, also seems keen to dabble in Bollywood movies direction, in future. But that’s another story.

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