The hidden voices
Composer Amit Trivedi reveals the real singers behind the hit song Emosanal Atyachar after nine years
For nine years, the legend went, two obscure singers hailing from Himachal Pradesh were the voices behind Emosanal Atyachar, from Dev D, until now when composer Amit Trivedi reveals it was actually him and lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya who crooned the song. The hidden voices
The 2009 Anurag Kashyap film became extremely popular for its music by Trivedi. While all the songs were loved, Emosanal Atyachar went on to become the biggest hit and established itself in the pop culture for years to come by.
Interestingly, the song was credited to two unknown singers — Band master Rangeela and Rasila. Both Kashyap and Trivedi were tight lipped about them and maintained that the duo had vanished without a trace post recording. From scratch to song
In an interview, Trivedi spills the beans on how the song was composed for the film, which released in February of 2009. “Anurag wanted the song to be in a specific way. It was his vision. The term ‘emotional atyachaar’ was his, the idea of doing it in a brass wedding band style was also him. I just executed his vision and plan,” he says.
“When Amitabh and I were creating the song, we thought we will sing the song ourselves first to present Anurag what we are doing. Later on, we will get some qawali singers or really interesting cool guys to sing the song,” he adds.
Things took a turn, when Kashyap ended up liking the scratch version. “Anurag got angry saying ‘Why do you want to change the voice?’ I said ‘but this is just a scratch version, me and Amitabh are singing. He said, ‘this is exactly what I want!’ Amitabh was scared, because he wasn’t singing in his normal voice. We tweaked it a little bit, and made our voice caricature-ish. And Amitabh wanted to be a singer so he got scared. He said ‘I want to be a singer and if this is debut I won’t get work.’ We got scared. So we changed the name to bandmaster Rangeela and Rasila. So, yes, we are them!” Trivedi revealed. A turning point
Dev D became a turning point for all the parities involved, including Kashyap who struggled to get a hit with his earlier films like Black Friday, No Smoking and the unreleased Paanch.
It also made the industry take note of Trivedi, who again collaborated with Kashyap in his production, Udaan. The 38-year-old composer says several of his songs have been born out of background score, including the much loved Aazaadiyan from Udaan and Ik Tara from Wake Up Sid.