We first spotted them in Opus, a city-hotspot that was known to bring the best talent from across the country to familiarise them with Bengaluru’s music-obsessed crowd. But that was over a decade ago. Sanam (named after the band’s lead vocalist, Sanam Puri) has since grown in popularity and was also featured on the Hindi version of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014 with their original single, Main Hoon. Now featured in several Bollywood film soundtrack albums and with over a dozen albums, popular covers and singles of their own, the band’s YouTube page records 100+ million views on several of their videos on a daily basis. Ahead of a recent performance at Phoenix Marketcity Mumbai, we caught up with the band — Sanam Puri (lead vocalist/composer), Samar Puri (lyricist/lead guitar/composer), Venky S or Venkat Subramaniyam (bass guitar) and Keshav Dhanraj (drummer) — to find out what they’re up to now…
You’ve been going strong since 2010, but how did Sanam actually happen?
Sanam Puri: Venkat (Subramaniyam), Samar (Puri) and I have known each other since 2003. Samar and Venky are batch-mates and I’m their junior. We actually met in Muscat and sat together to talk about this back in 2003. Then we came to India and met Keshav (Dhanraj) in 2009. Venkat introduced us to Keshav — they used to play together in a different band in Chennai and Bengaluru. Then we won a competition called Superstars and since then, we’ve all been together. 13 years going strong!
How often do you release originals and are you planning any soon?
Sanam: We don’t release originals as often. So far, we’ve mostly only created renditions, I don’t think we’ve maintained a balance too well between originals and renditions, but we hope to balance it with more originals starting soon.
How do you decide on the songs to cover or are they randomly chosen? What is your process?
Sanam: Depends on the song actually, but Venky (Venkat Subramaniyam) takes the lead on this. Mere Mehboob for example is a lot of Venky’s doing in terms of the kind of music the rendition should have and the way the song should begin, to give it the right kind of intensity, so, the audience can understand the original intention behind the composition.
Venkat Subramaniyam: I think, there’s no particular way of finding which zone we want to enter with a specific rendition. Sometimes we just get it, sometimes we need to experiment and wait for it to simmer and come back to it if we’re not happy with the result. O Mere Dil Ke Chain for example came to us very quickly, then there are songs like Aur Iss Dil Mein, where we put out one version sometime back and now what we’ve just released is something very different.
Sanam: There are a lot of things, but for me in particular, I cannot compose if I’m not happy. I mean, I understand it’s important to feel both emotions, but that change of emotion from being sad to being happy, when you value happiness more, is what inspires me to make music. There are also a lot of realisations that come to you when you’re experiencing these emotions, each one of these realisations plays its part in inspiring me so there’s no definite answer.
Keshav Dhanraj: And games… Sanam needs to play his games to create music…
Sanam: I’ve been hooked to video games for 25 years now. It’s something that relieves me. I need to play every day to feel normal and in my zone.
What is that key ingredient that goes into these songs that make them so unique and so popular with your fans?
Sanam: I would say our intention — we want to do something for the people through our music. There are so many times when we’re feeling low and we listen to music to make ourselves feel better. So, this is our intention, to make people feel good. So many people have come and told us they felt uplifted in their spirits after listening to our music, so many cancer patients have told us this… things like this keep us going and give us purpose. Then there are things that come to you when you don’t even realise
Keshav: I would say it’s also the simplicity, so many people don’t understand the language and hence the lyrics, but they connect with the music because of the simplicity of the music.
What can we look forward to next?
Sanam: So far, we’ve mostly only created renditions, but we hope to balance it with more originals. We can’t speak of a timeline as yet because we want to surprise our fans with every single release!
Kya Hua Tera Wada is streaming on YouTube.
romal@newindianexpress.com
@elromal