The local flavour

But when this Kutchi lad decided to compose and sing a Marathi song, there were compliments galore, not just from the Bollywood community but from the Marathi music fraternity as well! Shekhar spoke to CS about the song ‘Saazni' and the greater cause he's supporting through it.

Who: Shekhar Ravjiani
What: On composing a Marathi song
Where: At his studio in Bandrau00a0

Marathi connect
I spent five years of my childhood in Nashik as my parents had a farmhouse there. I made a lot of friends there, mostly Maharashtrians. They would come over and there would be these great jamming sessions with them. I was surrounded by Marathi music and food. In recent years, I have been listening to Marathi music on the radio in the afternoons. So I just felt like doing a Marathi song. I had a tune in mind and everything fell in place naturally. Ravi Jadhav wrote the lyrics and Bela Shende sung the female part. It was a dream I had of composing a Marathi song and some energy, some force made it happen.

Language no bar
When I was behind the mic, I asked Ravi and Bela to help me with the pronunciation. I wanted that even a Maharashtrian person hearing the song should feel that a Marathi singer has sung it. When I sang Saazni at the finale of a music reality show, almost the whole Marathi film industry was there and they loved it. Raj Thackeray heard it and said he really liked the song and the thought behind it. He even gifted me a 40 years' collection of John William's background score. Marathi is a lovely language. I have been getting messages from Istanbul, Greece and even Italy through social networking sites. A lady in Miami posted a message saying she doesn't understand the language but she finds the song beautiful.

Helping God's children
After doing this song, I could have either put it online or I could have done something else with it. I decided to support the cause of girl child education through it as it's something close to my heart. God has given me music as a gift and if this gift can be taken ahead to help God's children, then nothing better than that. Every time this song is downloaded or somebody puts it as a ring tone, the proceeds go to an NGO called Maa Niketan, a shelter for abandoned kids, mostly girls. They take care of their food, stay, stationary and other requirements from the age of 3 to 24. The monetary gains will go towards their upkeep.u00a0