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Now There's A Movie On Chamkila - in the making

It’s quite common these days for an actor to come up with a story for a film. The latest entrant to this creative breed is Kunal Kapoor, who established himself as an actor with Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Rang De Basanti. However, unlike other actors who take credit for regular commercial fare, Kapoor’s story is based on Chamkila, a popular musician in Punjab in the 1980s, who was assassinated.
Tentatively titled Chamkila, the film will be directed by Navdeep Singh, who won critical acclaim for Manorama Six Feet Under, featuring Abhay Deol, Gul Panag and Raima Sen.

Getting started

Confirming the news, Kapoor said, “I was shooting in Punjab when I heard someone talking about Chamkila. I was curious and found out more. I felt it was an interesting story. I called Navdeep and discussed the idea. It excited him and he agreed to direct it. Another friend, Nilesh Dadich, whom I’ve known since the time I worked as an assistant to Rakeysh, is producing it.”

Singh admits that it was natural that the actor would play the lead in this movie. “Besides, he makes for a good Punjabi guy,” he enthuses. On further probing, he concedes, “It’s about a young Punjabi musician, played by Kunal. He’s a huge fan of Chamkila, and one day, something happens which changes his life.”

Despite the strong Punjabi flavour, Singh is certain that Chamkila will not be a standard Punjabi musical. When questioned if he will also shoot some portions in London and Canada, because a lot of Punjabis travel to those parts, Singh asserts, “Although the film will have a Punjabi setting, it will not be commercial, but more real.”

Reality check

Says Kapoor, “Every time you visualise Punjab in Hindi films, it’s portrayed in a typical way. We’ll explore the underbelly of Punjab, that is grungier and has never been seen before in our movies. There’s a lot more to Punjab than just the music that you hear in Hindi films.”
Amit Trivedi, who shot to fame with Dev D, has been signed to compose the soundtrack for Chamkila. And he’s already travelled to Punjab to get new voices for his compositions. “We’re looking for one male and one female voice.

But it’s also possible that we might make Kunal sing if we don’t get the kind of voices we’re looking for. We’ll train him,” says Singh.
Kapoor, however, has no idea about his director’s plans for him. “I just want to act in the film,” he asserts.

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Kunal Kapoor plays a singer

Manorama Six Feet Under director Navdip Singh’s film Chamkila hasn’t gone on the floors yet, but the movie’s lead actor, Kunal Kapoor, has already been asked to enroll himself in singing classes to lend authenticity to his role. Kapoor plays a singer who’s a fan of Punjab’s renowned singer, Amar Singh Chamkila, who was assassinated in 1988.
Amit Trivedi, who is composing music for the movie, says, “We’ve asked Kunal to learn how to sing, since it will do justice to his character of a folk singer. With someone else’s voice, I may end up looking unreal.” But Trivedi maintains that Kapoor will be asked to sing for the movie only if he’s unable to find any folk singer whose voice would suit his persona. In fact, the composer, who has given music for Dev D and Aamir, recently spent a week in Punjab with lyricist Shellee to look for folk singers with a voice that will suit the actor’s character in the movie.
“We auditioned singers in Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and in many villages in Punjab to find raw, rustic, Punjabi ki mitti voices,” says the composer. “We unearthed some real gems and heard some pure, raw sons of our soil sing brilliant folk [songs]— the kind that’s unfortunately dying these days.”

The composer was also impressed with the sound of traditional folk instruments. “It was a rare phenomena to hear such instruments live, which are on the verge of extinction. Like, there’s an instrument called ‘algoza’, which has a sound similar to playing two flutes at the same time — it hasn’t been heard of in Bollywood. Today, everyone wants to take up a guitar and be a rockstar and such instruments are dying out,” he rues. Trivedi plans to use such instruments in Chamkila as well as upcoming projects.

But even though the composer-lyricist duo found voices of great potential, none of them matched in texture with Kapoor’s voice. Trivedi will keep the playing field wide open.

“I found a singer called Major Khan whose voice seemed to fit, but when I heard his recordings back here, it didn’t excite me as much,” rues the composer. “But I did find a Rajasthani folk group and a Punjabi band that I may invite to Mumbai soon. As of now, the search is still on.”


I PERSONALY BELIEVE AMAR ARSHI SHOULD BE THE SINGER, AS I BELIEVE HIS VOICE WILL FIT WELL WITH CHAMKILA SONGS

INFO WORLDWIDEWEB

CHAMKILA - The Legend

Chamkila was born “Dunni Ram” on July 21st 1961 in Dugri, Ludhiana. Chamkila was from a poor family and lived in great poverty. He had one brother and two sisters whom were older than him. His mother, Kartar Kaur, passed away when Chamkila was a young child, and his older sisters and father used to take care of him.
Chamkila had always wanted to become an electrician but due to family difficulties he had to leave his education and work in Ludhiana in a cloth mill. Chamkila had one of his first songs sang by “Narinder Biba and Surinder Sharma” by the age of 10. The majority of Chamkila’s earlier songs had lyrics to do with electricity such as shock and connection etc, due to the fact he wanted to become an electrician.
Chamkila was a talented musician from a young age and used to play the dholki and vaja for pocket money whilst still at school. He later played the dholki for singers such as Surinder Shinda, K.deep, Jagmohan Kaur and M.Siddque.By the age of 15 he had a number of songs sung by famous Punjabi folk singers, such as Surinder Shinda, Narinder Biba, Kulie Ram, Bibi Tara and Sohan Lal etc.
The name Chamkila comes from the name Rangila, who used to be a folk singer that Chamkila admired greatly. Chamkila comes from the word “Chamak” (shine) as he wanted to shine forever in the world of music. Chamkila began to play the dholki and vaja for Surinder Shinda regularly. It was here that Chamkila began to make his stage career as he would perform on Shinda’s stage during intervals.
Chamkila soon went solo leaving Shinda. When Chamkila left, he took Surinder Sonia, and much of Shinda’s band and stage comedian. Chamkila and Surinder Sonia released their first record in 1979. Punjabi Folk fans grew fond of Chamkila’s style quickly as he had a very charismatic personality. In addition to singing his own songs he continued to write and sell his songs to other artists.
Chamkila left Sonia in 1980 and began singing with Miss Usha, which was only a stage arrangement. By late 1980 he heard of a famous female singer called Amarjyot who sang with Kuldip Manak.. She soon became his permanent singing partner.
At the time of joining with Amarjyot, Chamkila was married. This partnership with Amarjyot lead to a break up of his marriage in December of 1982. Their first LP record together was “Lack Mera Kach Varga” which included a song written by Pali Dethawalia entitled “Chack Lo Drivero”.
People began to become offended by the fact Chamkila was of the “Chamaar” caste and Amarjyot a “Tharkani”. Due to this Chamkila began to use Singh in his name and became Amar Singh. Chamkila rarely used his first name after that. It also became a rarity for him to mention the name of his pind when writing songs.
By 1984 Chamkila and Amarjyot were in high demand and were producing hit LP after LP with new songs all written by Chamkila. The songs that Chamkila sang were mainly about relationships which some people found offensive. Chamkila began to get hate mail and threats to his life.
In the early 80’s, Chamkila toured such countries as, USA, Canada, Dubai and Bahrain. Accompanying Chamkila on stage would be comedians (Tukuan or Mano) who would do impressions of Mehal Mittal. His shows lasted about 2-3 hours and every show began with a few religious songs.
Chamkila continued to get more and more hate mail but Chamkila always said “this is my music this is what I sing if you don’t like it, then don’t buy my records and don’t call me to your functions”. In HMV’s recording history, 3 of Chamkila’s LP records are still the highest selling records that were ever produced by a Punjabi singer.
After receiving more letters from angry fans saying Chamkila you have many songs containing vulgar and offensive lyrics. Do something good. Chamkila produced 3 LP records of dharmik geet (religious songs). His religious songs became number 1 hits. Chamkila however, only wrote a few religious songs himself. Most of them he bought from other writers. All profits that came from the religious songs went direct to the charities and local gurudwara’s. This was done as Chamkila said it was God who gave him the gift of music and what better way to say thank you to God.
By late 1985 Chamkila stopped singing his more offensive songs. The public was still unhappy and wanted Chamkila to stop singing altogether. Chamkila started to write and sing songs which were of a very serious nature.
Chamkila was killed in a show in “Mesumpur” as he stepped out of his car. Amarjyot was pregnant at the time and was shot in the chest and Chamkila was killed with 4 bullets in the chest alongside Gill Surjit and the dholki player Raja. The other members such as Tukham escaped. The blame was put on terrorists. A Curfew order took place when Chamkila was killed and riots between gangs broke out.
Chamkila died on the 8th March 1988. The reasoning behind his death is not fully known. Many people have speculated that Chamkila was killed because of jealousy of other singers. It is said that the others singers grouped together and got him killed. But then again their were many other popular singers, Why Chamkila?

My Favourite Songs Of 2009

A VERY HAPPY 2010 New year To All

Here is my favourite playlist of 2009
Just a handful of winners in my opinion.
Really i went through about 70 albums of 2009 and this is virtually it for me
Not In Any Particular Order



song : Sab Rishte Naate Haske Tor Du
film : De Dana Dan
singer : Rahat Fateh Ali Khan & Suzanne D’Mello

song : Ajj Din Chadheya
film : Love Aaj Kal
singer : Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

song : Teri Meri Yeh Zindagi
film : Life Partner
singer : Soham Chakrabarthy & Shreya Ghosal

song : Dhan Te Nan
film : Kaminey
singer : Sukhwinder Singh and Vishal Dadlani

song : Rock The Party
film : Aa Dekhen Zara
singer : Sunidhi Chauhan & Shweta & Vijay

song : Yaariyan
film : Shadow
singer : Anand Raj Anand & Anushka Manchandani

song : Aasman Choona Nahin
film : Mornin Walk
singer : Shaan