News: Koni Prakash Naik
Pics: Zubair
Muscat, Jan 30: Spandana Muscat created history by launching a Kannada and Tulu music album titled ‘Zeal & Zest’ (musical ripple) in Muscat recently.
The man who made it possible was none other than the shining star of Sandalwood, musical maestro Ravi Basrur. It was a moment of pride and privilege for Spandana team to felicitate and honour Ravi, who is currently one of the most sought-after music directors of Kannada film industry having given dozens of hit songs in the past couple of years.
Ravi Basrur was here in Muscat on a private visit for about 3-4 days. His original plan was to see some beautiful locations for his next film. Spandana Muscat took this opportunity and organized a felicitation ceremony in honour of Ravi Basrur’s glorious achievements in the film industry inviting some closely connected Spandana members, local singers and distinguished sponsors. During the ceremony, Ravi Basrur was honoured with the traditional floral bouquet, garland, a shawl, fruit basket and a memento. Local singers presented melodious Kannada and Hindi songs on Karaoke to keep music lovers entertained while Basrur closely observed the local talents.
Impressed by the prevailing talents and overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of local singers, young and old, Ravi Basrur shared an idea as to why not use the singers and make an album. Within no time, Spandana team got into action and made all the required arrangements for the audition, venue, recording, launching among others.
Ravi Basrur penned the lyrics, took audition, finalized singers, composed the music, and recorded the album in 3 days, 4 hours and 20 minutes. Sharat, Naveen Acharya and Niranjan assisted him with guitar, tabla and lyrics. The launching ceremony was aired live on Facebook.
Despite the short notice, around 35-40 aspiring singers turned up for the audition and amongst them, 20 singers were selected. All the 20 singers were given the opportunity to be a part of this first ever Kannada-Tulu music album. Lead singers were Sakshi Bhagawat, Sumana Shashidhar, KishanUdyavar, Raviprakash, Rhea Kiran, Satwik and Lakshmi Venkatesh, Vijay Salian, Raj Sanil, Ananya and Anupama Prasad, Nisha Anil and Pavana N Shetty. Production team has Ravi Basrur, Vijay Kumar, Prakash Naik, Riyaz B H, Nagesh Shetty and Umesh Buntwal.
During interaction, Ravi Basrur imparted his life’s experience to the singers and members which highly inspired all of them to think differently and to do something different together to bring out a new change in the society for the benefit of mankind.
Spandana Muscat expressed its appreciation and gratitude to Ravi Basrur for accomplishing the unimaginable and a daunting task of launching the music album in such a short time and sharing his in-depth knowledge about music and film industry.
Over the past few years, Spandana Muscat has been making its sincere efforts to identify and showcase talents of truly deserving artists (not necessarily celebrities), thereby giving them an opportunity and international exposure - musicians, instrumentalists or artistes of any other performing art, like Yakshagana. In addition, Spandana Muscat is also trying to reach out to various humanitarian causes such as blood donation, charity works, assisting the needy and downtrodden etc.
Some of the events presented by Spandana Muscat in past few years are ‘Sangeeta Lahari’ in 2011 with Ravindra Prabhu and Anita D’Souza, ‘Yaadon Ki Baarat’ (Nenapinangala) in 2012 as a tribute to late Padmabhushan Dr Rajkumar and late Padmashree Mohammed Rafi with Tagore Das, Naveen Koppa and Sangeeta Balachandran, ‘Raag Anurag’ in 2013 by Sunita and Shreenath with special magic show by Om Ganesh, musical evening to felicitate Guru Kiran who was on a private visit, mega blood donation drive in 2014, ‘Shaam-e-Sargam’ in 2015 with Prarthana Chowdhury and Naveen Kumar, ‘Yeh Shaam Mastani’ in 2017 with Shri Ram Kasar, Aishwarya Ranganathan and Sri Raksha (Zee Kannada SaReGaMaPa finalists).