If you stayed on till the end credits of Ludo, you would have been as surprised and delighted to hear Shilpa Rao’s version of Hardam Humdum as we were. The singer has done full justice to the beautiful track composed by Pritam. She gives full credit to the composer and to director Anurag Basu for creating the masterpiece. “Pritam had an idea of doing a ghazal in an EDM format and that idea became this song. I have been a fan of Anurag’s movies forever and I think this was the perfect way to collaborate with all of them,” she says. Here’s Shilpa in conversation with TMM.
How would you describe your working relationship with Pritam?
The first song I recorded with Pritam was in 2009. I share a wonderful friendship with him that I really cherish. He is someone I don’t hesitate to call for any advice.
The current lockdown has changed us all in a lot of ways. Do you think it has changed you on some levels?
If it has not changed you as a person, you need to start thinking. This is a message from nature, from the universe telling you there is something wrong with the way we have lived our lives and that it’s time to change. Even before the pandemic, my life has pretty much been this way. I take off on breaks to visit new places and collaborate with various artists. That’s always been my thing. On a regular day, we would end up spending three-four hours in traffic just to go for a meeting. With COVID, we realised that some decisions can be taken over a phone call. The chaos has just been created by us. Work can happen irrespective, especially for musicians, our work had been digitized long ago. Musicians all over the world have been putting out music. Thanks to all of them, there is something to look forward to in these dark times. I have always felt that art always gives you an answer and it saves the day.
In the past couple of years, you seem to have slowed down your work a bit. But each time you come up with a song, there is still so much buzz around it…
One tends to gravitate towards people who are like-minded. I love to work with composers such as Mithoon, Vishal Shekhar, Pritam and Amit Trivedi who are doing great work, but not everything is in your hands. Sometimes the film gets delayed, or it is a bad row of a year or two when the song doesn’t get enough eyeballs. However, the one thing that I am very grateful for, is the audience’s love for everything I have done. It is so immense and more than I can ask for. I might sing one song a year but they make it so large for me that I don’t miss anything else.
You do a lot of non-film work as well. How much weightage do you give to that?
The weightage is always the same. It has been almost 14-15 years of me recording songs in Bombay and I still feel the same butterflies in my stomach. I still feel anxious whether I’ll be able to connect with a song or not and I love that feeling and want to hold on to that feeling till my last day. I live for that excitement. The song is the most important thing. If it is a good song that I can connect to and emote it well, I will do everything in my capacity to be there for it. So, music is music. There are no boundaries to it. Recording days are very dear to me and close to my heart.
How important is it for you to collaborate with various artistes?
I started doing that around 10 years ago. I have always felt the need to talk to different artists who have a different approach to music and trust me, you always end up becoming friends with people you collaborate with and it’s a friendship for life.
Your father trained you in music and you sang a lot with Hariharan in the initial days of your career. Since then, you have worked with so many talented musicians, but is there something that all great musicians have that inspires you?
As human beings, we are conditioned to having two tones in our conversations – one is to be extremely subservient to somebody above us and one where we can shout at someone because we can. However, 
to have a tone of equality and respect is very important. Whether it is AR Rahman sir or Illayaraja sir, Pritam, Mithoon, or Vishal-Shekhar, they have developed that tone of equality through the years. Even if it’s a newbie, they speak to that person with the utmost respect and that’s a big learning for me. Bombay teaches you that so easily. It doesn’t matter where you come from, all that matters is how good you are at your work. I love Bombay to the last cell in my body, for what it has given me and the values it has taught me. There is something that I have learned with every project. Even when a project doesn’t work out, it teaches you so much. The work ethics seep into you.
What have you been listening to these days?
I feel I have been living with this one man who I respect and have admired all my life and that’s Mehdi Hassan saab. I have been listening to him and trying to better my skills at ghazals.
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