Those unkempt messy curls and beard give him the appearance of a carefree youngster, but when Aswin Ram begins to sing, you tap your feet and watch in wonder as he breaks into groovy dance moves. As if reading your thoughts, he confesses, “I am a diehard MJ fan.”
Aswin’s mashup of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You by combining 15 songs — 14 of them Malayalam — has earned him over a million views, something he had never expected. An avid YouTube follower, he has earlier uploaded 10 of his works — both original creations, covers and mashups —with his compositions and vocals, but none of those has been such a huge hit. “There are endless versions of Shape of You, but none in Malayalam. I thought of giving it a try and the response was unbelievable! Mine was not at all a famous YouTube channel with much hits; all my viewers were my friends and college mates, until this happened!,” says a surprised Aswin.
An active member of Resonanz Dance Crew, the dance team of his college — NSS Engineering College, Palakkad, this 22-year-old says his pillar of strength is his friends and his government employee parents and violinist brother. Such strong supporters are they that a room at their home in Thenkurissi village has been converted into a studio for the boys. “My village is a small one and people there have not much connect to social media or YouTube. It’s my mom who shows everyone the video,” laughs the Computer Science student, who is happy to have made them proud.
The making of the video has all been the idea of his childhood buddies — Arjunan who directed it, Sujith who was his associate and Danish Mackenzie who handled the camera and did the editing. Danish came up with the idea of a dual role appearance. Aswin’s part was ‘just’ the appearance, vocals and mash-up. They shot it at a cousin’s place and after all the edits, uploaded it and the rest, as they say, is history.
The humble lad says that he plays ‘a little bit of guitar, violin and chenda’ and dreams of making it big one day as a music-dance performer -like his idol, but he is too amateurish now. “It’s a long way to go and I have a lot more to learn,” he signs off.
