Life has never been a bed of roses for music director Ratheesh Vega. Time and again, he has spoken about the hardships and struggle he faced in his childhood and later his youth, to realise his dream of becoming a music composer.
All his hard work paid off when he composed some soulful melodies that stayed in the minds of the audience. But the debacle of his band Lalisom, with Mohanlal at the helm, had him facing the music and the brickbats thrown at him with fingers pointed solely at him. He withdrew into a shell and faced some of the darkest days of his life.
But for a man whose life has been a struggle, he has come out of his self-imposed exile; thanks to his industry friends and his music. Ratheesh mentions that the support of some of his industry friends is what kept his spirits buoyant and made him decide to come back. He confides, “I even thought of stopping my work!”
The man is back in the reckoning. The musical score of the film Aadupuliyattom has given him breathing space and infused a new vigour in him what with the positive calls, messages and encouraging responses the trailer of the film has been generating. Ratheesh says, “I had middle-aged people and families coming and complimenting me and I feel it is when a song reaches such audiences that the creator in me finds satisfaction! This film belongs to the horror genre and in this film, I have used the musical score to instil a sense of fear and that too, through soft music.”
He also says that Vellakadduva producer Job Oomen paid him an advance and insisted that he compose the music for the film. Also in hand is V. K .Prakash’s Marubhoomiyile Aana. Ratheesh is very happy about the general music scene. He opines that in earlier times the value of a music director was high and most films gave high priority to music. While that waned in between, songs are once again finding their place in the sun. To make hay at such times emerge many players who either strike gold or fizzle off.
Ratheesh states, “It is important to make an impact with your musical score and I am glad I could do that with my initial score for films like Cocktail and Beautiful. Those compositions became my reference point and it is because these references still speak for me that I was able to recover and come back. Competition is good because it makes me work double hard to do something different. But without doubt, survival is tough!” which is when the tough get going.
