Singer Hriday Gattani on his association with AR Rahman


Hriday Gattani, who has sung for AR Rahman in Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light, on how he found his calling

The year was 2013 and singer Hriday Gattani was handed the mike to sing at an AR Rahman concert in Kolkata. This was the then 22-year-old’s first-ever concert and he was to sing alongside Rahman; there were over 60,000 pairs of eyes watching him. To his pleasant surprise, Hriday felt no stage fright, no pressure, no nothing. “The stage felt like home,” he remembers, adding, “It all felt just right.” This is no surprise, for, Hriday travelled all through his childhood with his father Deepak, who has managed several of Rahman’s concerts. “I’ve been helping him on stage from the time I was six,” says Hriday. “This included making sure people got in on time, and volunteering to ensure that all went on well.”

The Mumbai-based Hindi playback singer has sung ‘For You My Love’, a song composed by Rahman for Blinded by the Light, a British comedy-drama directed by Gurinder Chadha. The song, he says, is ‘very personal’. “It is about the character and his world; his problems in society. He’s an Asian living in the UK, who wants to be like everyone else around him. But his parents want him to strictly stick to his roots…it talks about how you can do anything for somebody if you set your heart to it.” The film is about a British teenager of Pakistani descent growing up in England, who finds solace in Bruce Springsteen’s music.

Hriday is a playback singer, songwriter and composer; he made his Bollywood début with the 2014 film Lekar Hum Deewana Dil. The 28-year-old has worked closely with Rahman; he studied in Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory in Chennai. “I did a course in vocal techniques,” he says, adding that it was an enjoyable experience to be able to study music, move with friends who were musicians, “eat, sleep, and breathe” music all through school. “After classes too, we discussed music; analysed Rahman sir’s songs…we would often be awed at what he did in a particular song,” he adds.

Hriday knows that he has been “extremely lucky” in an industry into which thousands of people yearn to get into. “Some might even find it difficult to contact Rahman sir,” he says. He wants to put this luck to good use by “doing my best, work hard and not be complacent”. He says, “I’m clear on what I want to accomplish: I want to become a complete musician.”

After his début in playback singing, Hriday had a lull in his career. “This was during the years 2015 and 2016,” he remembers. But it was during these years that he “worked on himself”. He concentrated on his song writing, composing, guitar and piano skills and got active in music production and sound design. “Those two years are helping me even today,” says Hriday. Later, he even went on to compose music for the 2018 Marathi film Youngraad.

Apart from playback singing, Hriday is keeping himself busy by making independent songs. He won appreciation for his recent single ‘Uljha’ in collaboration with Vishal Dadlani’s label VLT (Vishal Likes This). “I’m right now shooting for a Hindi song composed by Shashaa Tirupati that I’ve produced and sung,” he explains. “We’re shooting in Mumbai and it’s a sweet, melodic track.” Hriday feels that “there’s so much talent out there” when it comes to playback singing and that it’s “very hard to do just that”. Which is why he feels that singers should “put out content themselves” on social media, rather than wait for someone to create it for them.

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