What started as a bunch of IT guys deciding to form a group called Techies4Kannada to connect Kannadigas within the tech industry through music has now transformed into a large ongoing project called KChords that has embraced, among other things, educating underprivileged children, and orchestral music from the Czech Republic!
They began rather casually, after a carpool conversation in 2013, and then spreading out and working across countries from America to Australia. The team is now out with their second Kannada music album Ananya Aalaapana …Unconditionally Music , a year after their first album, Baa Sangaati… In a Journey of Love .
“The album is being released to coincide with Kannada Rajyotsava, with a high-energy new-generation Kannada patriotic song dedicated to Kannadigas around the world. It has got a strong sentiment that Kannadigas, especially those living on foreign shores, will certainly recognise and connect to,” says Mysore-based Paawana Poonacha, who has written lyrics for four of the songs on the album, and is a content architect with an IT firm.
The song, among other things, illustrates how Karnataka has richly contributed to the technological progress of our country and the world, she points out. The album has a total of seven tracks.
The team is also excited that this is the first time that the orchestra for a Kannada music album has been executed by a foreign symphony – the Czech Symphony Orchestra at Prague.
“We decided to bring in Czech music into the picture to add a global flavour to our Kannada roots,” says the album’s music composer, Karthik Somanath, a technical architect at an IT firm in Bangalore.
“We worked back and forth after explaining our needs, explained the theme, emotions, and discussed the kind of orchestration, the scales we were looking for, to align the music to what our people will connect with. Ultimately music is a universal language,” he concludes. The final recoding of the orchestra was done in Prague last month. The team in India worked late on week nights and picked up pace on weekends and the voice tracks weRe recorded in a studio here in Bangalore, says Karthik.
The seven tracks reflect the theme ‘Life is Beautiful’ and focus on what makes it beautiful, says Karthik — the songs are on friendship, love, peace, music — in the tracks titled Adhbhuta ee jeevana, Prakrutiya vismaya, Shudda layada, Huttitu hego bandhavyavu, Madhura swaragala milana, Bhuviyu Smariso, and Jagadali yelle hodaru. The album features noted singers Hemanth Kumar, Anupama M.A, Santosh, Anuradha Bhat, Shamita Malnad, and Ramesh Chandra, and newcomer Chandana Uday.
In fact their last album sold more than 2,000 copies worldwide and prompted them to set up a trust called the KChords Trust, so that all the proceeds from their album sales goes towards a social cause.
The album will be launched on November 2, at the Jnana Jyothi Auditorium at 6 p.m. For details on what they do, check www.kchords.org
