Imagine recognising your favourite song not from its opening line, but from the faint instrumental of the previous one. That musical guessing game powers Tour Breathless, the new concert format from Motta Maadi Music.
The title says it all. “In this show there are no gaps,” says founder Badhri Narayanan Seshadri. “It’s going to be song to song. For around 45 minutes at a stretch, you’ll just keep singing along. That’s why we called it Breathless.”
For audiences familiar with their trademark singalong format, the idea might sound like an evolution of what they already love. But internally, the shift required the musicians to rethink everything.
“For eight years we’ve been doing a similar kind of show,” he says. “So we thought in 2026 we have to change the format. We wanted to ask ourselves, what happens if we put ourselves in the fire?”
The challenge is not just musical stamina. It is memory, rhythm, transitions and stagecraft all happening simultaneously.
“In our usual shows we perform around 20 songs,” he says. “Now we have 67 songs in the show. To remember what comes next is the difficult part. The transitions are the real challenge.”
“Tamil film music is beautiful because it goes across many emotions,” Badhri says. “The first segment takes you through all kinds of feelings — sad, happy, anxious. The second segment is where you relax into melodies. And the last segment is the party section where everyone just jumps and dances.”
In other words, the show behaves less like a conventional concert and more like a wave of emotion that gradually builds across the evening. The idea of the chain format adds another layer of intrigue.
Instead of clearly separated songs, melodies flow into one another, sometimes hinted at only through an interlude or a familiar instrumental cue.
“The audience will actually recognise the next song through the interlude,” Badhri says. “That surprise is part of the fun. We don’t want them to expect exactly when a song is coming.”
If the concept sounds dizzying, rehearsals have been equally intense.
“The main challenge is muscle memory,” he explains. “We all know these songs in the usual format. Now we are cutting lines, transitioning differently and remembering new sequences. Eliminating what your mind already knows is difficult.”
Technology plays a quiet role too. Carefully arranged backing vocals create layered harmonies that interact with the audience’s singing, sometimes making the crowd feel like part of an accidental choir.
“When the audience sings and the backing vocals come in, it almost feels like an a cappella harmony,” Badhri concludes.
And if Tour Breathless works the way the team hopes, it will feel less like attending a concert and more like being swept into a musical current.
One song bleeding into the next. One memory triggering another. Until suddenly, over an hour has passed and the room realises it has been singing together the whole time.
Tour Breathless will be performed on March 13 at 7.30 pm at The Music Academy on TTK Road.
Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
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