Herald Café: It has almost been a decade of singing for you. How has
the experience been?
Anushka Manchanda: I wouldn’t say it’s
accidental but I just happen to be in the right place at the right time. And
this has happened to me many times over. This is not what I wanted to do; I
wanted to get into advertising. Then this contest happened (Channel V contest)
and things changed. And then after the band (Viva) split, Channel V called me
in to audition as VJ and then that happened. Someone called me in to do the
song and that happened. So I have just gone with the flow. The last couple of
years have been a period of self-discovery. I’m more certain about my career in
music now than ever. Music makes me really happy. I want to do my own thing. I
have been trying to figure out what exactly in music do I want to do; so no
more going with the flow. Now I’m making plans.
HC: As a singer, which genre are you most comfortable with? Why?
AM: Rock & Roll – it comes most
naturally to me. Even my voice is more suited to it and it’s what I know best
and what I grew up listening to. So it’s the easiest for me to sing. I find
that my voice sounds really nice when I sing softly. So I’m exploring that part
of my voice and not just ‘slamming it out’, which is what I get called to do
most of the times.
HC: You started playback singing in Tamil and then moved to singing
in Hindi and other languages. Being from north India, how easy or difficult was
it?
AM: It’s all phonetics, honestly. When
they called me, I was like, “How am I going to do this?” I called Clinton Cerejo
who’s worked with music directors like Rehman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy for years,
and sung in different languages. He asked me to write down how I understand
what they sing and sing it like that. So I just phonetically wrote down
everything in Hindi and English, got a basic gist of what the song was about
although I really didn’t have to ask because the song had a couple of English
lines like, ‘Sex is a fire station, let’s do a new revolution’ (laughs). But
it’s easy to do it. You need someone to correct your pronunciation while you’re
recording and a lot of singers do it.
HC: Tell us something about ‘Superfly’. How did it happen?
AM: I met Anish Sood at
the DJ awards in Mumbai last year and a couple of days later we were on the
same flight coming to Goa, sitting next to each other. So we were chatting and
decided to do a track together. He sent me the basic track; he and Jay (Nanok)
were working together. We started this process and it was great. Although we
were not in the same city, we connected online and kept bouncing ideas off each
other. And over a period of time, the song took shape. We gave the song enough
time to grow.
HC: Goa being a talent pool, do you see yourself collaborating with
other DJs/musicians from Goa?
AM: I would love to! There are several
people here who I’ve been interested to work with. There is someone whose
artist name is ‘Gridlord Gidra’. His production skills are really amazing. He
is fondly known as ‘Tomu’ and he’s from Parra. Today I have an opportunity to
do something with Elvis Lobo who I’ve known for years, and Bosco and Xavier who
I’ve never met. I’m open to collaborating with musicians as long as we’re on
the same page. I feel that the most important thing when people are working
together is that they want the same thing. This is what happened with my band.
It was something that I was experimenting with. And these are my friends that I
was playing with. They’re all amazing musicians but we didn’t all want the same
thing. And it fell flat. It was a tough lesson because it was four years of my
life that I put into that project. But it just made me realise that if you’re
going to work with anyone, you need to be on the same page and equally
passionate about doing what you want to do.
