Dear M Jayachandran
I like your music because your songs are melodious. I have done some cover versions of your songs in my music blog because I loved them so much. And then I happened to read an interview of yours in Manorama newspaper and I have a problem with some of the things you have said there against singers. You, in an effort to paint yourself white has gone overboard with your comments on the singers. You were asked “why do you hate singers so much?” and there is something in your answer that I want to talk about here.
You said: “Singers see us as a ladder to fame. When the song becomes a hit they forget the ladder. Then they behave as they wish.”
I don’t get this. Of course, everybody in the industry is using everybody else for work. There are so many music directors out there who use singers to sing for them free of cost. These music directors don’t pay a single penny to the singers. Instead, they promise a hit. Obviously the singers would have the same attitude to music directors as well. And what exactly is your concern? The singers to whom you give songs don’t behave like slaves? That they need to treat you as if you are some colonial landlord or something? Times have changed, MJ.
You said: “I pay even the new singers. But they should be convinced that their performance was worthy of getting paid.”
First of all, it is not your generosity that you pay the new singers. I mean, what the heck! You choose a singer only after the audition rounds and when you are fully convinced that the singer can deliver what you want. And when you get the singer to sing your song, you are supposed to pay him/her the money that he/she earned with their time and effort. Your words, that you pay “even” the new singers, come from a cheap industry standard where you guys – music directors – do not pay the new singers for their efforts so that you can keep all the money that the producers give you. You do that in the name of giving them “a chance”. Shame on you!
You said: “Those who sing well in ganamelas (music troupes) would be like a cat in the water when it comes to recording in a studio. Because even the small mistakes would be audible in a recording studio”.
Singing well on a live stage show is not an easy thing. To dance when you sing is even harder. Singing in a studio and singing live are two different things. One has to learn the techniques of recording in a studio and it needs good preparation if they are inexperienced in studio singing. In fact, I don’t see any problem for a live singer to adapt to the studio recording techniques after a few tries. On the other hand, have you ever heard those “perfect” studio artists struggling to sing when they do live stage shows? Have you noticed how many of them do the lip-sync business on stage?
You said: “After the recording, we have to spend two days to correct their pitch. We have softwares available to do that. The great songs sung by Yesudas or Sujatha were not pitch-corrected this way.”
Do you believe all Yesudas songs were recorded in one take? I heard that in the early days, when there was no punch-in recording or multi-track recording, the whole team including the singer and orchestra had to repeatedly perform the entire song if there was a single mistake. The time and energy wasted on this was humongous, let alone the money that a producer has to pay for the studio time. With the advanced technology you can record the orchestra and singers separately, that too at the convenience of the music director and artists. This saves you time, helps you schedule your recording sessions better and to spend little time on correcting a specified line or word. So what is wrong in using the advantage of technology? Of course, I understand that the option to correct the pitch has made singers lazy and the singers have to work on their part to deliver their work perfectly, but your words seem just an excuse to not pay the singers.
You also mentioned that there are singers who offer to sing without getting paid. Likewise, I have heard of music directors approaching new movie directors with the offer to compose music for free. Ahem… Also I have heard of a music director often being described as the beacon of caste-politics in the Malayalam film music industry (the so called Nair spirit is what I am referring to). Any words on that? 😉
So here is what I really want to say. Clean your yard first and then talk.
Thank you.