It is not very often that fate offers meaning to experiences and helps them align with people’s expectations. But for musician Vijaynarain Rangarajan, the passion and love for the art form urged him to travel back home to India from his ‘monotonous’ corporate life in Australia. The ideation with samples of music, application of his own creations in terms of sounds and musical elements and experimenting with his guitar for around six to eight months led him to create Rayil Pogum Idam, his recent track. We roped him in for a quick candid discussion about the same.
Moment of crescendo
“Around June or July, I travelled to the Netherlands to visit my sister,” Vijay narrates, revealing details of how he arrived at the concept of the song. “One of those evenings, I was sitting with nothing much to do. I was listening to my Dropbox, which had some of my unfinished scratches and then I was like ‘Hang on... this sounds like a full song’. All the ideas seemed to be fleshed out,” he continues. He highlights that the music along with his scenario at the time, which involved quite a bit of travelling, acted as the base for something special.
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Having written a few dummy lyrics for the track, upon his return to India, the artiste had attempted to rope in famed lyricist Super Subu, known best for the popular track, Hukum, from the Rajnikanth-starrer, Jailer. But as fate would have it, Subu’s appreciation of the existing lyrics being intimate and sensible also urged him to encourage Vijay to finish the song himself. Thus came about the soul-stirring words of this song.
Working it out
During our chat, we also learned that the musician considers this song as his nod to the popular singer and guitarist John Mayer, and also is inspired by music of music band Hollow Coves. Comparing this song to his favourite John Mayer song, Stop This Train, which also revolves around the concept of travelling but through a different lens, he says, “I wanted my song to be more hopeful. But the metaphor present in Stop This Train seemed to be the apt one to borrow.” Therefore Rayil Pogum Idam, in contrast, is a traveller’s song and focuses on the singer being one. He presents to the listeners — “I don’t know where this train goes and I don’t care because I am sitting by the window, watching the world go by and it is beautiful”.
We also asked Vijay about the process of the shoot of the music video. Praising the efforts of its director, Viswanathan aka VVish, the crooner, tells us that the song was shot over a span of two days and with a small team of four including himself, in Nagercoil. “This experience here was more of an honest connection I was making than walking around in Europe. It was great to go back and appreciate the lifestyle and surroundings that Nagercoil had to offer,” Vijay observes.
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As the musician reminisces about the deep journey of creating the song, he also reveals his plans going forward. The singer and music producer tells us to look out for more original songs and performances in the near future, including being part of a big act in Chennai by a prominent Tamil music artiste.
Rayil Pogum Idam's music video is streaming on YouTube.