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A song of success

PHOTOS: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

VERSATILITY HIS MIDDLE NAME KK jamming with the audience

With his electric agility on the stage, a child-like smile and no airs but only grace and politeness, singer Krishna Kumar Menon, KK to most of us, floors you, completely! What’s more, he leaves you wide-eyed when he reveals that he is 38, and has a 14-year son, Nakul. You marvel at how his boyish look and a shy bearing cloak his age. “I got married at 22 as I was well settled as a computer guy before getting into professional singing,” he says to dispel your surprise. “A Delhi-born, bred and educated Mallu (Malayali),” as he defines himself, KK is now settled in Mumbai. Whenever he can, he takes time out to be in Delhi though, like he did this past week to perform at the annual function VIBGYOR’ 08 of his alma mater, International School of Business and Media at Noida, And as expected, he set the stage on fire with songs that made him what he is today: “O humdum suniyo re” (Saathiya), “Awarapan banjarapan” (Jism), “Aapki dua se pyar hua” (from the album Pal), “Tadap tadap” (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam), “Tu hi meri shab hai (Gangster), “Pehla pehla pyar” (MP3), “Khuda jaane” (Bachna Aai Haseeno), “Tu hi dil hai” (Jhankar Beats), to name a few.

Taking out time for a quick conversation before the show, KK, with a glint in his eye, says, “I just met my college principal, and my music teacher Santosh Kumar from my school Mount St. Mary. It was a boy’s school. For the first time I didn’t feel scared sitting in front of them. Kids took autographs and old friends gave bear hugs. It was sheer nostalgia.” Smiling, he also adds that he was “quite studios but very naughty” in the school. “It was all boys’ school. We had a very naughty music group but we always stayed within rules.”

Like his music teacher, KK says his parents and wife too supported him wholeheartedly when he decided to take up music for a career some 15 years ago. “I worked as a computer personnel and also as a copy writer in advertisement agencies but that nine-to-five job never excited me. I would come home and produce music on my computer. I used to sing jingles in many languages and was earning good enough to lead a married life. Once, my father (a businessman) figured out my passion for music and said, ‘We won’t stop you from doing whatever you want to do’, and this made me fly to Mumbai for my musical journey,” recalls the singer.

Almost a destiny’s child, KK didn’t have to struggle really hard. For the first four months, he lived with a friend, sang at night clubs and “met all important advertisement guys like Ashley Lobo, Shiv Mathur and Prahlad Kakkar.” This was because he “ never thought of singing for Bollywood and wanted to do only jingles.”

With a warm smile, he recollects that the day his son Nakul was born, he got his first jingle to sing in Mumbai with the help of singer-composer Leslie Lewis. His fresh voice in the ad world was noticed. “The ad world is quite small and hence the news spreads fast. They got to know that I could sing in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, English and Hindi. It gave me an edge over others as most can sing only in English and Hindi.”

The shift to playback singing was “smooth” and soon made him a name to reckon with, with numbers like “Chappa chappa” for Machis and also the “Tu Hi Dil Hai” number in Jhankar Beats. He says the success of his first album Pal (released in 1991) helped too but did not quite establish him in the film industry. “Tu Hi Dil Hai” topped the charts yet it didn’t give KK the mileage that Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam did. In this film, Ismail Darbar gave him “Tadap Tadap” “the landmark song” as he puts it, which made him famous in Bollywood. “ Jhankar Beats was more of an urban-centric film and Hum Dil.. was commercial, masala film which had a mass appeal,” he states the reason for his popularity after “Tadap Tadap”. Today KK acknowledges Leslie Lewis and Ismail Darbar for “shaping” his career. And all that happened with his natural talent. “I have not learnt classical music in the conventional sense,” he admits.

Talking about his musical journey, he says, Mumbai, though a dream city for playback singers, had left him high and dry at times as he was offered many an indecent song to sing.He has recently recorded “a tapori number” for Shah Rukh Khan’s forthcoming film Billu Barber and insists that “there is no level for a singer in Bollywood. They are supposed to sing whatever they are offered.”

“Initially, I used to carry a moral baggage and would even get attached to the songs personally. Once, I had refused a producer, not wanting to sing a soft porn number,” says the former resident of Delhi’s Alaknanda. Now things are different. He adds, “I detach myself completely the moment I finish recording a song but I still avoid singing songs with double meaning.”

And that’s what makes him special, and even underrated at times. But he cares little. “I pray to God to give me more songs than awards. I don’t go to award ceremonies. Frankly, it’s very embarrassing. I don’t party, don’t socialise, don’t do late nights, don’t drink and don’t smoke. I am an early-to-bed and early-to-rise type. In my free time, I compose my own music on my computer.”

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