'Life of Pi' singer Suraj Jagan talks about his musical journey

Suraj, who became a known name after ‘Give Me Some Sunshine' for 3 idiots, recently sang the promotional track ‘Manzil' for Ang Lee's latest film. Suraj speaks to CS about his musical journey:

On a song
Composer Shrikanth Sriram and I have known each other for years. When he called me to sing ‘Manzil', I didn't know which film it was for. I heard the song and really liked it. For me, the song was the highlight. The advantage of singing for a big film is that it gets promoted well. Other than that, I'm just a small fry in the whole scheme of things. (Smiles)

Who: Suraj Jagan
What: From rock to playback
Pic/ Wilson Ranbhiseu00a0

Promotional Feature/Editor: Janhavi Samant

Sunshine tales
‘Give me some sunshine' was the turning point of my life. It's clichéd to say that but it really brought sunshine in my life. Thanks to this song, a lot of doors have opened for me. The media wrote about the song and me. I had never thought it would be such a big hit as it had an English chorus.

Filmi fare
I never ran after playback singing. It was never my agenda, so I was never faced with reactions like how can a person who sings in rock bands sing for Bollywood.u00a0I got a chance to sing for Bollywood as I used to sing a lot of ad jingles and knew a lot of people from the music studios. I knew Vishal and Shekhar and they asked me to sing a song for their film. Initially, it was friends who called me for playback as they knew that I could do justice to other genres apart from rock too.u00a0

Loving the extremes
For me, it's all about singing. If I can do justice to a song, I'm happy. I don't have any restrictions when it comes to music. The only restriction I will have is if I feelu00a0I don't have the ability to sing a particular song. I'm not educated in music, so singing a purely classical song would be difficult. If I have to choose, I would say there's nothing that comes close to singing rock songs on stage. There is a mind-blowing exchange that happens with the audience! On the other hand, if I have to sit and compose a song, I would probably come up with a soft, melodious number. I love both the extremes.u00a0