Much like Sivamani, the knee-high protagonist of Shiv Hare’s film Atkan Chatkan can drum music out of any object. Naturally, Sivamani agre...
Much like Sivamani, the knee-high protagonist of Shiv Hare’s film Atkan Chatkan can drum music out of any object. Naturally, Sivamani agreed to compose the soundtrack as “the script really touched me, it took me back to my childhood, and how I struggled as a musician”, he told Scroll.in.
Atkan Chatkan, which is being streamed on Zee5, follows a group of musically gifted slum kids who form a rag-tag band. Unlike the protagonist Guddu (Lydian Nadhaswaram), Sivamani, born as Anandan Sivamani, had a supportive father in SM Anandan, a percussionist in the southern film industries.
Sivamani was introduced to music at the age of seven. A few years later, singer SP Balasubrahmanyam spotted him at a live concert and took him under his wing. “In every live show, he gave me a 15-minute drum solo,” Sivamani said about the legendary singer whom he calls his godfather. “He showed me to the world and the world showed itself to me.”
Since then, Sivamani has been a part of several fusion groups performing at the intersection of classical, folk, and pop. Among his regular collaborators on the stage are Shankar Mahadevan, Niladri Kumar and Louiz Banks. Sivamani has also been a session musician for leading film composers for almost four decades, including AR Rahman. Excerpts from an interview.
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