MUMBAI: Digital is the new gold mine for today’s musician, is something we all know. Thanks to discoverability on platforms such as spotify, youtube, facebook and daily motion and what have you, dependency on music labels has reduced. And James Thakara is yet another south Indian star in the making. Having composed Malyalam singles like, ‘Podi Penne’ and ‘Puttu Paattu’ and the band is now trying out its luck in films. Thakara has done the promo song ‘GVQ’, for Srinath Rajendran’s Koothara Malayalam flick.
“We are doing a couple of songs for the film ‘Otta Oruthiyum Sariyalla’. One is the remake of my famous single ‘Podi Penne’ and other is the romantic track ‘Paayum Kili’. We are also working on a single titled ‘Ammachi’,” says James to Radioandmusic.com.
He further adds, “We create music videos that we upload on Youtube that works tremendously well for us. Our first video ‘Podi Penne’ was created by my friends who had confidence in my singing skills and they put together the video and it was done for Rs 700 including, the recording and mixing.”
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James moved to Ernakulam (Kerala) with his bunch of friends who helped him recognise his singing talent and also create a video for his single. If anyone would go through the details of his video on Youtube it is mentioned that this video was made on a zero budget. It further states that Thakara is a collective effort of film students/ bathroom rockstars.
He reveals, “I have no background in singing. I practised singing inside bathroom. In today’s time, if you have the talent, you do not need a label to publish your songs. One needs to keep up the spirit and have close friends on whom one can trust and things will work.”
“Only thing that we did was me and my friends would take turns and share the video every five hours on Facebook. We did that for three days keeping an alarm,” laughs James.
Speaking about the live music scenario in Kerala, James highlights, “There is not much space for live music in India but I am hopeful that it will grow in the coming years. ‘Podi Penne’ received more views from Kerala. Meanwhile, my second track ‘Puttu Paattu’ got more views from cities and outside India and I realized things have started working for the band.”
James is currently looking forward to have some permanent band members. He has met few well-known names and hopes things will work in his favor. Well if they don’t he can always continue to YouTube it.
