Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru
With Inputs from Media Release
Mangaluru, May 17: We are living in unprecedented times and adapting to new ways of caring for the people in our lives. The need of the hour is to socially distance ourselves from our friends, extended family and the society to ensure each other’s safety. Contrary to our fears of being isolated from each other, the lockdown has actually brought people together through social media platforms, innovative ideas and initiatives across the globe. Now more than ever people are looking for avenues to brighten their day, to lift their mood and to keep themselves engaged and entertained.
One such creative project took shape under the leadership of a talented and passionate music director and composer, Roshan D’Souza Angelore from Mangaluru. What began as a recreation of an old composition, evolved into a major project involving musicians, singers and artistes across the globe with a common goal of creating something oustanding.
The result was a unique 'Earth Song', in nine different languages, featuring 17 singers, eight poets, and five musicians.
Roshan D'Souza Angelore
Allwyn Fernandes
Dilraj Rodrigues with Roshan D'Souza Angelore
The Earth Song concept started with a thought as to give a new life to an old tune composed in 2011 by Roshan. The tune was originally composed by him, for his musical students’ performance for a school event, themed Earth. With the human race becoming more ambitious day by day, all through the years, mother earth has suffered a lot with continued abuse by everyone living on the planet. The thought of releasing a video during this coronavirus pandemic about mother earth and the values of earth, with a message to remind everyone that we have only one mother earth and it is time for us to be serious and love it like our own, was foremost in mind. The fact that Roshan's friends are lovers of nature was an add-on.
As the tune and lyrics were originally in Konkani, the plan was to have a small quarantine lockdown Konkani video, with a few known singers of Mangaluru. As the thought process started to evolve, Roshan rooted the Idea of making it a multilingual song, involving more people and this was discussed with the team. Hence began the process of re-structuring the song, which finally involved about 50 artistes. Roshan reached out to his long termed Friends Dilraj Rodrigues and Ivan Pereira and cousin Melroy D'Souza, to help him chalk out plans for this mega project. Roshan, Ivan and Dilraj are founder members of the Konkani rock band ‘Teetotalers’ with charitable shows and events to their credit.
Dilraj Rodrigues, currently serving as a chief engineer in the merchant navy, music and Konkani comes from deep within his soul, mind and heart. Dilraj took care of the complete production costs and pitched in ideas as required from on-board the ship. He even managed to get the full ship crew involved for a small cameo video which has been incorporate into the song while sailing the vessel Front Odin across the Indian Ocean. Ivan Pereira, ace drummer and proprietor of ProPix graphics studio, undertook the designing and final editing of the video. Melroy D'Souza undertook the role of the project designer, coordinator and publicity in-charge by assisting with all publicity posters promo videos, YouTube promotion, suggestions for videos etc.
A dream-come-true moment was when Alwyn Fernandes, ace guitarist, the best Mangaluru has seen and rated among top ten guitarists of India by Rolling Stones, agreed to join with the lead guitar, who recorded from Dubai. Talented musician brothers Sanjay and Sanjeeth Rodrigues from Mangaluru have also been a part of this project. Sanjay has played the Melodica and keyboards, while Sanjeeth has played drums. Josey Jon, a celebrated bass guitarist from Kerala played the bass guitar, while Roshan has played backing guitars and keyboards. The whole project was mixed and mastered by Nithin Koottungal at Orpheus sound designs at Ernakulum, Kerala, to the best possible quality, as many of the voices were not recorded using professional setups. In the final audio one cannot make out the difference in recording quality, that is the professional master stroke by this brilliant mixing engineer.
A team of the most talented lyricists was chosen and they complied to compose lyrics glorifying Mother Earth. The team comprises Lloyd Rego Tacoode (Konkani), Wilson Kateel (Tulu, Tamil, Kannada), Sanjay Borkar (Marathi), Karen Tellis (English), Sajeev Sarathie (Hindi), Nithin Kootungal (Malayalam) and Debduth Sadhu ( Bengali)
Strong and powerful full voice always reaches out and appeals to people with the right message. The finest of the singers have lent their voices for the dream project wholeheartedly: Lavita Lobo (Konkani) from Chennai, Joshal Dsouza (Marathi), Robin Sequeira (Kannada), Meera Crasta (Hindi), Shilpa Cutinha (Hindi), Ashwin D'Costa (Hindi), Roopa Prakash (Tulu), Prakash Mahadevan (Tamil), Rynel Sequeira (English), Joel D'Souza (English), Adolf Jayathilak (English) from Mangaluru,
Nihal Tauro (Kannada) from Moodbidri, Prajoth Dsa (Hindi) from Udupi, Sreshtha Ghosh (Bengali) from Kolkata, Orson D'Souza (English) from Kuwait, Renston Fernandes (English) from United Kingdom, and Nithin Koottungal (Malayalam) from Ernakulam.
As it was tough to shoot outside with professional cameras and equipment due to the pandemic lockdown, almost all the videos were shot using mobile phones. Each one co-operated by shooting videos from their respective homes in and around Mangaluru, around India, Gulf and places as far as the United Kingdom. The video involves the participation of 20 different families and about 150 people from all over the World. The song and video have been composed, compiled and presented to the people of earth as a gift by the Team Earth song, without any monetary benefits/gains/interests in mind.
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