MUMBAI: Saregama India has lined up a slew of film projects for the year ahead.
Karma Aur Holi, Saregama’s first Bollywood-Hollywood joint production is set to be released in March. The music for the film has been composed by Raju Singh who has Jannat, Life in a Metro, Woh Lamhe, Chandni Bar, Page 3, Gangster and Raaz –The mystery continues to his credit.
Speaking on the music of Karma Aur Holi, Raju Singh says that he composed for the movie keeping in mind that even though the general sound for the movie would be international, the Indian essence had to stay. He has worked on five tracks for the movie, including a Holi festival song rendered by Sonu Niigaam and a song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from his album Sangam. The live version is performed by Kunal Ganjawala.
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Unlike other Bollywood compositions where songs are composed centrally around the characters in the movies, the music for in Karma aur Holi revolves around the scenes and situations in the movie, avers Singh.
Saregama’s second international release will be Japanese Wife, that has a well known Japanese actress playing the lead along with Raima Sen and Rahul Bose. The movie will be directed by Aparna Sen.
Another movie in the pipeline for Saregama India is the John Abraham starrer 1-800- LOVE which will be directed by Abbas Tyrewala (Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na). A mega budget Bengali film is also slated to be released soon and the music will be composed by Shantanu Moitra who was responsible for the music of Parineeta, it is learnt.
Saregama India has also tied up with Zee TV for the release of Telugu movies – Mast, directed by S V Krishna Reddy which was released in January and Manorama, directed by Eashwar Reddy, with Charmi in the lead. The two companies had tied up earlier with Sony Entertainment for the singing reality show – K for Kishore based on the legendary singer Kishore Kumar, last year. The winners of the show are likely to be offered an album with the music label, sources say.
Saregama is also in negotiations with many content owners to collaborate their content with Saregama’s music library.
Saregama head, New Media and Publishing Gautam Sarakar spoke on the dawn of a new age of music, wherein the company has started to promote the digital kiosk concept for retail distribution of its music. The company is currently experimenting with this facility at music store Rhythm House in Mumbai and the same will be introduced in a number of other music outlets across the city, says Sarkar.
The official website of Saregama India (revamped a year ago after the company undertook a massive digitisation exercise of its repertoire) is currently under maintenance, and the company is currently working on a more robust search engine which will pinpoint the songs which the user is searching for after logging in accurately despite the large database. According to Sarkar, the website will be functional by 15 April 2009.
Sarkar said that the company had made a strategic decision not to acquire or make any mega budget films in 2008. He elaborated saying that music sales have been dropping by 12 per cent yearly, but despite the ongoing recession, the last quarter has seen a better picture with the dip stagnating at seven to eight per cent.
