Making waves in indie music
Maalavika Manoj, an independent music artiste, has shot to fame through her collaboration with Anirudh on his Valentine's Day single Onnume Aagala.
Chirpy 23-year-old Maalavika Manoj has been making waves in the indie music scene for quite some time now. Recently, she has grabbed the attention of everyone with her peppy vocals in composer Anirudh’s latest Valentine’s Day special single Onnume Aagala. We talk to Maalavika about her passion for music, and why she wants to concentrate on indie music.
“My parents have always supported me and my music. I started playing the piano when I was five and gradually started to play the guitar as well. I was into poetry at school, and when I turned 16, the poetry turned into songs, and I have never turned back since,” says Maalavika, who had her own band called ‘Bass in Bridge’, during her high school years. The singer then studied for a few years in Lille, France, far away from the music and art culture of Paris. It was after she came back to India, that she seriously pursued music as a career.
“My type of music keeps changing. I used to write a lot about people — like an analysis. Then, I started writing about change — both internal and external. What moving to a different place, or what losing someone, can do to you, etc. Currently, it’s hard to define what I write about — it is a mix of many aspects and also how I react to certain things.”
More than idolising one particular person, Maalavika gets her inspiration from many different people, everyday. “Nobody is perfect, so there is no one person that I look upto. I’d rather take a leaf out of everyone’s book. I take the best things about people like my parents and my friends, too,” she explains. Talking about Onnume Aagala, she says, “Anirudh and I go back a long way — we were friends right from school. We worked on one song in his debut film 3. We wanted to work together after that but it didn’t happen. Last month, we performed together at his live concert in Singapore, and we decided to work on Onnume Aagala. It has been receiving a great response and so many views in a span of just a few days.
Although she has worked with established music composers like AR Rahman, Harris Jayaraj, Vijay Antony and Anirudh, Maalavika wants to focus on her indie music as of now. “Playback singing already has an audience and media support.
The effort you put into indie music is lot more compared to playback singing. In Chennai, avenues for independent music are honestly very few. But things are slowly changing. I will still accept playback offers, but my main focus will be on my own music.”
With a never-say-no attitude, this young singer has also been getting acting offers. “Maybe sometime in the future,” she says, signing off.