In this week’s Musical Rendezvous, BIG FM’s RJ Siddharth Mishra, talks about radio and how it transformed his sound skills in Theatre production. He hosts the ‘Breakfast Show’ for Big FM.

Influence of Golden Era

The story goes much beyond Big FM, actually the influence of music in my life started since my childhood. The Golden Era music is huge, and includes music from the likes of Shankar Jaikishan, Naushad, S. D. Burman, RD Burman, Laxmikant–Pyarelal and O. P. Nayyar amongst others. I was always interested in that genre and that era of music as it was very different.

Big FM has the unique style of presenting classic music which in generic terms in called Retro music. In the generation of Google and Wikipedia, we have a knowledge base, but knowledge perceived with interest level is very important. It cannot be only about meta data, but how much you are into one song or music depends on your willingness to go deep. Some of the songs are instrumental in nature and some are vocal. Every song has a story of its making, so all of it makes content wonderful and that is primarily what the morning show on Big FM is all about.

Influence of today’s music

You cannot be detached to things that are going around, so definitely the music that is played now affects me. I believe that every era has good music and bad music. I will never say that the Golden era of music did not have bad music because it had bad music also. It is the same scene now as well.

Today, songs are used to promote films. Very often it is seen that two or three songs used to promote a film are not included in the film. The longevity of the song is thus affected as they are only used for promotion. Some songs and musicians still stand out today. Musicians like Shankar- Eshaan- Loy, A R Rahaman, Amit Trivedi amongst others, have a style and quality that distinguishes them from the rest. Most films today are following a trend of having multiple music composers. Today, music is not perceived as the integral part of Bollywood. It is used as a tool to promote the film and then the stars take over. That is the problematic area, but I would love to listen to new music. Recently, I really enjoyed

the songs from ‘Highway’ by Rahaman saheb. I am waiting for films that have music of Shankar- Eshaan- Loy. As the movie euphoria dies, songs also lose their longevity, which is not the case with songs from the Golden era. Those were lyrically beautiful and were nicely integrated into the film.

Films

The last film, I saw was ‘City Lights’; I like watching films minutely from the start to end. I can watch films from any era with the same enthusiasm and interest. Even though I watch most films, I still have to wait for one good film to come. Today, the waiting period is too long.

I have three one TB hard disc full of movies. There are movies from Argentina, Spain, Chile, Turkey, French, Italian and English to name a few. I have a collection of 3000 odd movies.

Independent music space

I like the initiative MTV Indies has taken as nothing much happened in that space. We are devoid of independent artistes. Though MTV started Coke Studio, it is not getting that much mileage. I listen to Coke studio but I like Coke Studio Pakistan as they are way ahead of India. It is very evident through the songs that they come up with. I like Coke Studio 2 in India as it includes more folk music. I am into theatre as well and it involves lot of music, especially folk music.

Other activities-theatre, writing, travelling and more

I am mainly into theatre so I keep writing and rehearsing for plays. The last production was ‘Final Solution’ by Mahesh Dattani. We performed three shows of that in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Bangalore and that was the last production. I am working on a new script and the production for that will start mid-August or early next month. Apart from that, I write anything from poems to film reviews or travelogues. I have stopped acting and now I am only into direction. I have written six plays and three of them are published. All of them are in production. One of my essays is published in the book called ‘Chutnefying English’. It is about English culture in terms of language and attitude.

I like travelling and do so once in a while; I can travel anywhere. In addition to all this I am a foodie, I eat a lot. I like trying new cuisines.

New experiment on radio

I would like to do a travel show on radio. It should be a complete travelogue as one cannot have a show based on one day travelling. Radio is a theatre of mind games. It is very easy to show on TV, but the real challenge is to air the show on radio. Every place you travel has a story attached to it and one can tell that story on radio. This is one thing that I would like to definitely experiment with on air, and how it can be combined with music that we play on-air.

Mixing radio and theatre

Radio gives you a good sense of sound and it plays a very important role in theatre also. It is the key element in theatre. Every time I design sound in my play, using radio helps. As a radio professional, I have developed an ability to understand the effect sound can create on the audience. It definitely helps that I am part of radio when I am doing my plays. Since I started working with radio there has been a change in the sound of my productions.