Gillian Cal­iste

Lo­cal In­do-West­ern act Kaveesh the Band has teamed up with Bol­ly­wood play­back icon Al­ka Yag­nik to cre­ate an orig­i­nal song.

“Tu Mu­jhe Mile” (“When You Met Me”), a love song, is the band’s lat­est project and will be launched by JA Pro­duc­tions of the UK in Lon­don be­tween late March and ear­ly April this year.

The award-win­ning Yag­nik is the most streamed artiste in the world with 15.3 bil­lion YouTube views in 2022, ac­cord­ing to Guin­ness World Records.

She has sung thou­sands of songs in her 40-plus year ca­reer with her hits such as “Mera Dil Bhi Kit­na Pa­gal Hai”, “Ae Mere Hum­sa­far” and “Ra­ja Ko Raani Se Pyaar”, lip-synced by Bol­ly­wood ac­tress­es, a reg­u­lar fea­ture of Bol­ly­wood movies.

Recog­nised mu­sic com­posers Karan Lakhan who cre­at­ed “Machh­li” sung by Pawni Pandey and Shahid Mallya fea­tur­ing Sun­ny Leone and “Mera Pehla Pyaar” vo­calised by Javed Ali and Nikitha Gand­hi, and Bol­ly­wood lyri­cist Ab­hen­dra Ku­mar Upad­hyay who penned songs for films like Baaghi (2016), Rocky Hand­some (2016), Sing­ham Re­turns (2014) and Mr X (2015) are al­so part of the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Legendary Indian playback singer Alka Yagnik

Ac­claimed lo­cal pro­duc­er Ravi Ma­haraj co-pro­duced the track and Cell 4 Less TT and Nakasa Trad­ing spon­sored the au­dio while video pro­duc­tion was cov­ered by KD’s Su­per­store.

Speak­ing with Sun­day Guardian last week, leader of Kaveesh the Band, Kaveesh Ma­haraj hailed the ven­ture as a mile­stone for T&T’s In­di­an mu­sic in­dus­try as this is the first time a lo­cal In­do-based act has record­ed an orig­i­nal song along­side a Bol­ly­wood artiste.

“We are very hum­bled that an artiste of MsYag­nik’s cal­i­bre could ap­pre­ci­ate my voice and the band’s mu­sic and we are look­ing for­ward to many more col­lab­o­ra­tions. We are al­so very ec­sta­t­ic. Al­ka Yag­nik is an artiste we would have all grown up lis­ten­ing to, es­pe­cial­ly in the ‘90s”. She record­ed thou­sands of songs and has been rul­ing the Bol­ly­wood in­dus­try vo­cal­ly for a while. She’s a stal­wart in the Bol­ly­wood com­mu­ni­ty,” he said.

Ma­haraj said the project was part of the band’s unique path to break­ing in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets play­ing mu­sic with Kaveesh the Band’s orig­i­nal sound and uni­ver­sal ap­peal. He be­lieves the ef­fort would help raise T&T’s pro­file on the in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic and cul­tur­al scene.

“It means a big step­ping stone in­to a new mar­ket that can take Trinidad and To­ba­go on the world map from a cul­tur­al per­spec­tive and a mu­si­cal per­spec­tive. It opens a door for Trinidad mu­si­cians to have a choice and be­come more pop­u­lar on the world stage,” he said.

He ex­plained that the op­por­tu­ni­ty came about through broth­ers Karan and Lakhan from Mum­bai, In­dia, whom he met while he was a stu­dent of Hin­dus­tani clas­si­cal mu­sic and West­ern Opera at the KM Mu­sic Con­ser­va­to­ry in Chen­nai, In­dia.

There, Ma­haraj re­ceived train­ing un­der award-win­ning com­pos­er A R Rah­man of “Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire” (2008) fame. Karan and Lakhan are up-and-com­ing com­posers op­er­at­ing un­der the name “Karan Lakhan” and rec­om­mend­ed Ma­haraj as the vo­cal­ist to join Yag­nik on the project.

Ma­haraj said a movie pro­duc­tion-type video fea­tur­ing lo­cal Di­anne De­onar­ine of Make­up by Di­ane as the lead ac­tress and Kaveesh the Band was cre­at­ed for the song and the en­tire project came to­geth­er in about four months.

Ma­haraj who start­ed off singing sat­sangs at the age of two and a half formed Kaveesh the Band on his re­turn from mu­sic stud­ies in In­dia in 2015. Known for its or­gan­ic style, Kaveesh the Band merges clas­si­cal In­di­an and Bol­ly­wood mu­sic played in Al­ter­na­tive Pop/Rock style. Be­sides Ma­haraj, ap­pear­ing on the track and video are band mem­bers Ra­jesh Kalloo on bass, Ra­jiv Ram­lo­gan on key­boards, lead gui­tarist Micheal Chang Wai, Shi­va Man­ick on tabla and per­cus­sion, Naren­dra Ma­haraj who plays bansuri (In­di­an flute) and sax, John Ot­way on drums, and Ravi Ma­haraj who has played with and pro­duced mu­sic for the band since its in­cep­tion.

In the past, the band has staged three main con­certs and has worked with artistes like Or­ange Sky’s Nigel Ro­jas, Sol­man, and Gillian Moore. They al­so col­lab­o­rat­ed with in­ter­na­tion­al singer Bhavya Pan­dit in 2015.