Abhay music in Tamil flying off the shelves

Subhash K Jha

Even as the composing trio Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy wow listeners in Bombay with their score for Dil Chahta Hai, they're set to break records with their first Tamil motion picture soundtrack.

The music of Suresh Krssna's Aalavandhan, released Tuesday morning, sold a whopping 200,000 units within eight hours.

According to Magnasound's Madras representative Madhav Das, the soundtrack was gone from the shelves of music stores in Madras and neighbouring cities within hours.

In Madurai, restless fans threatened to ransack stores when they were told the soundtrack was out of stock.

"I have never seen anything like this before," exclaims the surprised leading man of the film, Kamal Haasan. "Of course, there's always a curiosity surrounding my film's music. But it's generally to do with Ilaiyaraja or A R Rahman's compositions.

"For the first time, a film soundtrack with an outsider -- and that too, a trio composing in Tamil for the first time -- has created such an impact. Musicologists and lay listeners alike are saying Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy have started a third school of film music in Tamil Nadu after Ilaiyaraja and Rahman."

Frantic efforts were being made till late Tuesday night to arrange for extra units of the sold out album. "Two-hundred-thousand cassettes are gone in eight hours, and that's just in major cities. The music hasn't reached smaller centres yet. The last time I saw such a hysterical response to music in one of my starrers was Rahman's Indian. That, too, was sheer magic," says Kamal Haasan.

The Aalavandhan soundtrack shows the three Bombay-based composers completely at home doing songs in Tamil. That one of the trio -- Shankar Mahadevan -- speaks fluent Tamil certainly helps.

Bombay is all set to release the music of the Hindi version of the bilingual later this week. Entitled Abhay in Hindi, the music is very different from the Tamil version. Kamal Haasan has sung two songs in the Tamil version and one in Hindi. In Hindi, audiences will get to hear the actor sing lyricist Javed Akhtar's theme song.

"It's amazingly difficult for any composer to make a huge impression beyond the two giants, Ilaiyaraja and A R Rahman," Haasan said. "But Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have done it." There's already a flurry of interest in the composing threesome in Tamil Nadu's film circles.

Aalavandhan is also being released soon in Hindi, and stars Kamal Haasan, Raveena Tandon and Manisha Koirala.

Indo-Asian News Service

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