'Rahman is my guru'

GV Prakash, AR Rahman's nephew, talks about a promise made to him by director Shirish Kunder, which sees him make his Bollywood music debut later this year in the Akshay Kumar-starrer, Joker

Music composer GV Prakash is particular about referring to his famous uncle only as 'sir'. Were the conversation not steered that way by us, he might not have brought up the association himself. But when the nephew of AR Rahman makes his Bollywood music debut in the Akshay Kumar-starrer Joker, scheduled for a December release, the subject is bound to come up.



"Rahman is my guru. It is his humility and passion that I wish to embody. I will always remain his assistant," says Prakash.

Peek into the future
When asked about Joker, the Shirish Kunder film in which he makes his foray into the Bollywood music industry, he says that the film is a work of fantasy. "The music suits the mood [of the film] with surreal tunes and a few commercial numbers thrown in. My favourite tracks are Dance Kar Le and Jugnu Ban Ke Tu. While Jugnu... is a commercial number rendered by Udit Narayan, Dance Kar Le is a dance number, sung using 10 different Indian languages," shares the 24-year-old, adding, "We have treated the film like a Tim Burton one." After Joker, which is scheduled for a September audio release,u00a0 Prakash will get to work on the background score for Anurag Kashyap's next, Gangs of Wasseypur.

Modest beginnings
The beginning of Prakash's music career was a relatively modest one, despite the shadow of the Music Maestro that followed him throughout. He recalls getting together with a bunch of school friends with similar tastes in music to form a band in Madras. "I got my first signing amount for the Tamil film Veyil, in 2006, at the age of 18. The film later went on to win the award for the Best Regional language film at Cannes," says Prakash, who had previously produced jingles and radio spots. "Aadukulam was another film that I had composed music for, which won six National Awards." From then on, there was no looking back for Prakash, who would compose music for Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films.

Bollywood calling
Prakash's Bollywood journey began with assisting Rahman in Rang De Basanti and Mangal Pandey."Rahman's sound engineer, the late H Sridhar, was the one who recommended me for Shirish's Jaaneman. I worked as a sound engineer for the project," says Prakash, adding, "He [Shirish] was impressed with my work and promised me that I would do the music for his next film. With Joker, he kept his promise." Ask him what a shift from the south to Bollywood entails, in terms of music, and he replies, "Every region has a culture. The instrumentation changes a little when moving from the south to the north. The melody remains the same, but the folk changes.
We use more folk styles like Bhangra in Bollywood."u00a0 "Other changes include moving to Mumbai and building a studio there in the near future," he adds. His favourite Rahman track? Without doubt, "Yeh Jo Des from Swades."