Songs and musician credits at the end.
There was a time when actors singing a song used to be a source of much excitement, given the rare occurrence it used to be. These days, however, with every other soundtrack featuring non-playback-singers behind the mic, that novelty has sort of worn off. That said, I don’t think I have seen a song feature as many actors as SaMaGaReSa has, in quite a long time – the last Malayalam song of the kind that comes to mind is Onnaam Mala Keri Povande (Kalyanaraman). Leading the line here is Innocent (incidentally part of the Kalyanaraman song as well), who interestingly also shares composing credits with Tsunami’s lead composers Neha Nair and Yakzan Gary Pereira. As per Neha, the opening verse is a tune that Innocent’s mother used to sing to him as a kid – something that is referenced in the song’s lines as well, written by the movie’s co-director Lal. Neha-Yakzan build well on that tune to create a light-hearted, hummable song that does not require the singers to do any heavy-lifting. The title should ideally have been SaPaGaReSa, but apparently this is how Innocent recollected it and they just retained it as-is (got reminded of Colonial Cousins’ blockbuster hit SaNiDhaPa which, as per the notes sung, should have been titled DhaNiDhaPa :D). My favourite bit of the song is where a bus horn, quite a common one in Kerala, is incorporated into the song and tune fits right in! This was apparently Lal’s idea – man seems to have a great ear for music! A bit surprised that the long actor-singer line-up does not feature any female actors, it is Neha handling the female voice here. My favourite song of the movie (from the massive line-up of TWO songs) though is Aaraanu, a dreamy romantic number once again written by Lal. Lovely use of harmonies here – particularly loved Neha repeating the aaraanu phrase sotto voce when Keshav Vinod sings the opening verse. Nice to see both the song videos feature the movie’s leading lady playing the flute, in correspondence to a flute solo in the backdrop (Subin in this song, Nathan in the first) – the solo in this one is especially charming.
It sort of looks like I tried to make up for Tsunami’s annoyingly short soundtrack with a disproportionately long review (well maybe I did, a bit), but the trivia related to the songs was too interesting to not share! Hope Lal Jr. (who is the movie’s other director, alongside his father) starts including more than 2-3 songs in his movies, considering the songs therein turn out to be quite enjoyable, much like this one. And if/when that happens, I hope that soundtrack is done by Neha Nair and Yakzan Gary Pereira, the duo are long overdue a proper-length album (just ridiculous that the last soundtrack they did which had more than two songs, was Iyobinte Pusthakam, back in 2014!)
Music Aloud Rating: 3.5/5
Musician Credits
Song Name : SaMaGaReSa
Music : Innocent, Neha S Nair and Yakzan Gary Pereira
Lyrics : Lal
Singers : Innocent, Lal, Mukesh, Suresh Krishna, Aju Varghese, Balu Varghese, Unni Karthikeyan, Neha S Nair
Chorus,Anoop Venugopal,Nithin Michael,Alex J Pullilkyal,Yakzan Gary Pereira,Jazeer
Live Guitars and Ukulele by Yakzan Gary Pereira
Flute by Nathan
Percussions by SruthiRaj
Recording Engineer – Kashyap R
Studio – 2BarQ Studios, Chennai
Song Mixed And Mastered by Vivek Thomas
Song Name : Aaraanu
Music : Neha S Nair and Yakzan Gary Pereira
Lyrics: Lal
Singers: Neha S Nair & Keshav Vinod
Flute: Subin
Mixed & Mastered by Vivek Thomas Productions
