I was called to Chennai to dub Tango Kalalo for A R Rahman: Hriday Gattani

The thing about singer-songwriter Hriday Gattani is he has a habit of springing a surprise every now and then. It began in Udan Choo (Banjo) for Vishal-Shekhar despite working with AR Rahman on 2014’s Lekar Hum Deewana Dil’s Tu Shining among other songs, More recently, he put out Sun Re Sajna, a single written, performed and composed by him for Vishal Dadlani’s independent music label VLT (Vishal Likes This).

But it is for his most recent song Tango Kalalo from Mani Ratnam’s Cheliyaa that he has sung for in Telugu, that has us interested. The film stars Aditi Rao Hydari and Karthi in the lead roles and the song has been picturised around them.

Hriday says it was fun dubbing for the song. “It has a rhythmic swing and upbeat feel to it. I’ve sung a couple of songs for AR Rahman (who has also composed Cheliyaa’s music). Maybe he thought my voice would suit the song and so, I was called to Chennai and made to dub it.”

Hriday and ARR last came together for another Telugu film, Suriya-starrer 24  for a song called  Prema Swaramulalo. “The Telugu track was a romantic ballad, a duet with Chinmayi Sripaada. Also, being my first Telugu recording, it was really hard getting the pronunciation right, matching the accent and feel without knowing the language. How it works is: you go to the studio without hearing the song, have to hear it there for the first time and dub it after hearing it a couple of times, someone generally guides you on the lyrics and accent before you go in and makes corrections through the process.”