MUMBAI: Unearthing talents can be a tedious task, when it involves going to a new place and trying to understand the musical flavour of that region. This is what Peninsula Studios recently did in Punjab and the end product was getting a bunch of musicians featured on an album titled 'Rangley Punjabis'.

Over 260 minutes of musical content was collected from 438 musicians in Punjab, but only after the Peninsula Studios team understood the music of the state. The team that worked on the project included The Peninsula Studios' chairman and co-founder Subroto Chattopadhyay and co-founder Sita Raina; studios head Avinash Chordia; films head Ananya Rane; events and logistics head Narinder Twakley; recording engineer Deepak Samson; and musicians like Neel Adhikari, Anil Srinivasan and Miti Adhikari, all of whom help curate and record music by 23 musicians.  

Chattopadhyay said, "The first musical programme was conceived by Raina and it featured musicians from Rajasthan. That time, we travelled across towns and villages of Rajasthan and recorded about 722 musicians but that time we received helped from other organisations. This time from the selection process to final recording was done by us." Due to the number of musicians involved it took almost a year for them to complete the project. He added, "We plan to have this project once or twice in a year, as it will take us six months at least to run through all the content we receive." Currently, the team is discussing the next location. The three places shortlisted include Kashmir, North-east and West Bengal.

The session featured on MTV as a three minute series called Nokia Music Theatre 'Rangley Punjabis of The Peninsula Studios'. The music video of the album will be launched in mid-December and will be played on various platforms.

'Rangley Punjabis' is Peninsula Studios' fifth album since its inception in 2010. The studio has won two National Awards from RAI - Recording Association of India for its previous project.

The studio has signed a five year partnership with Universal Music for marketing and publishing. Talking about the partnership with Universal Music, Chattopadhyay said, "Universal Music never interfered in the content creation process which is why the partnership with them was the best decision. Universal Music will reach-out to various platforms to make the album available all over the world."

The other three albums by Peninsula Studios were recorded live along with musicians from Chennai and Kolkata, and also received accolades. Chattopadhyay, who is the former MD of HMV (now Saregama) said that they would continue doing such activities as they stand with their vision which they conceived for the property. The Studios produce folk, classical and fusion music.