The sound of the hills

Singer, trekker and nature enthusiast Mohit Chauhan confronts love and longing in his first solo album

COMPOSER Salim Merchant is on his air guitar, air drums and a real keyboard. He can barely keep still as he records a scratch for a thumping, power pop number at Studio A at Yash Raj Studios for one of the most awaited films of the year Rocket Singh Salesman of the Year.

We're waiting for Mohit Chauhan, touted to be the voice of the new wave and are curious to know if the punchy number would have Mohit's name on it. Mohit walks in, with guitar strapped onto his back and his trademark golf cap in place, dressed in all black.

Salim gives us some time out before Mohit could deliver "a slow vocals and acoustic guitar only" tracku00a0 putting our doubts to rest. Like lyricist Prasoon Joshi once put it when he referred to Khoon chala, Mohit's Rang de Basanti: "Mohit's voice is made for soulful poetry." Sounds like that's the tone for the year.



It's also the feel of the former Silk Route vocalist's solo debut Fitoor. The 10-track album has been in Mohit's head for about eight years now filled with songs old and new. But the kind of laidback balladeer that Mohit is didn't let the wait unsettle him.
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"You need patience to see it through, it takes time," he says. For instance, Main hoon badal took seven years. "I had just one line and was struggling to write the song," recalls Mohit, "It just wasn't coming together but I wrote it in two days sitting at my Andheri flat last year."

The instrumentation stretches itself across a folksy acoustic guitar to a Xaphoon or what's commonly known as a pocket sax to a mandolin and even a low growling didgeridoo. Delhi friend and Parikrama guitarist Sourabh Chaudhary has unleashed some mean rockabilly lines while ex-Silk Route drummer Kenny Puri has supported his old bandmate on percussions, drums and the Xaphoon.

Mohit's clearly attached to the track Babaji, because that's the first one he asks us about. Named after a moniker that he and his childhood friends gave each other, the number is his most experimental effort on the album.

Babaji opens and ends with a bird call in the Himachal where the song took seed and the accompanying improvised riff that it inspired, progressing along to the studio version which has a distinct hilly billy flavour a la Dylan including a harmonica and the acoustic guitar.

The lyrics are a cheeky take on love, mythical or otherwise: "Babaji, dil ki baatein, Parvati jaake chedenge, Sunheri dhoop khili hai, Shanti Cafe mein baithenge."

Mai ni meriye is the other shining, wistful ballad that brings the hills alive. "This one talks about finding love in the hills of Chamba, which is why there's a reference to not wanting to settle down in Kasauli or Shimla, which are faraway from Chamba.

Iu00a0 sang it in one take without a metronome (a meter that keeps the tempo so that the singer can track the beats)," says the singer who has also played the mandolin on the track, "I went back and sang it a couple of times again but felt the first one was the best."

Most of Mohit's songs have a setting you'd kill for. The Floyd-ian Uff yeh nazara came to be during a rainy spell in Jhanjiali, a village in Mandi district. "A friend and I were put up at a forest rest house in a remote part of the village. We just sat inside, watched it pour and played music.u00a0

It was a view that was beautiful beyond words," says Mohit. There's also Meri tarah, a soul-searcher harks back to "happy, vibrant times spent singing, drinking and crashing on a friend's terrace" triggering the line: Hosh gum ho gaye the, Doston ke ghar ki chatt pe.

The singer's self-assured in his "untrained" technique, and it's really this raw pahadi colour to his vocals that's drawing all the attention. Besides Rocket Singh, Mohit has Deepti Naval's debut Do Paise Ki Dhoop Aur Chaar Aane Ki Baarish, Ken Ghosh's Dance By Chance lined up.

It's surprising how easily the mountain man has fit into the city of insomniacs. "I love the monsoons here. There were some white water birds roosting in the tree in front of my house, so that's a nice thing to wake up to. Besides, over here I carry the space in my head the green hills and blue sky it's all here," he says, tapping his head.

The mountains, the sound of the river give him the space to dive deep inside his soul, he says. "It helps me come closer to make a song or something like that," says Mohit defining his craft in true hill folk spirit and lingo.

In the Studio

Mohit tells us what it's like to work with the top composers in the industry

AR Rahman
He's a man of few words but has a great sense of humour. He's also got great judgement about the artiste. For instance, for Khoon chala, he asked me not to add any emotion to the song because the lyrics and the music were so emotional.

Salim Sulaiman.
They're really cool guys. They understand both the old school and modern music well.

Vishal Bhardwaj
He knows what he wants. He knows how to make his singer emote because he's the film's director as well and is always visualising how the song will look on screen.

Pritam
He's very chilled out. I knew him right from the time I worked with the band (Silk Route). He lets singers improvise.