Owe Everything To Theatre: Lyricist Swanand Kirkire

AMRITSAR, (IANS) – Attributing his success as a lyricist, playback singer, writer, actor, and dialogue writer Swanand Kirkire said that theatre has taught him everything.

The two-time National Film Award winner for Best Lyrics — ‘Bande Me Tha Dum…Vande Mataram (‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai’) and ‘Behti Hawa Sa Tha Who’ (‘3 Idiots‘) said that the whole ecosystem pushes a person towards excellence and forces him or her to multitask.

“You pitch in with every department. Be it writing or adapting the script, working on lyrics, acting, or giving inputs to design and direction departments. One gets trained to deliver more despite limited resources. Spontaneity becomes second nature, and a sense of fearlessness becomes your partner,” the lyricist said.

Kirkire has studied at the National School of Drama in Delhi and regrets not undergoing professional music training.

“Yes, now I feel that formal music training would have helped me, especially when I sing. However, I made an intentional choice to study drama. But now I realize that music was always inside me,” he opines.

The artist, who also works extensively in Marathi cinema, which has been making waves for more than a decade with some cutting-edge films made by young directors opines that content is still the king in that industry.

“In many ways, it is free from the extreme box-office pressure synonymous with the Hindi film industry,” he asserts.

Adding that working with fewer resources, Marathi film directors are experimenting more and coming up with stories from the soil that are told uniquely.

For a long, Kirkire has been fighting for due credit to be given to lyricists. Lamenting that many times, their names are not even mentioned, he rules: “This is so unfair. It is like forgetting history. How do you expect people to know who wrote a song that was aired 10 years back? We always work in the backroom and hardly get any exposure. Also, the music streaming platforms need to be more mindful when it comes to giving credits.”

The lyricist, who was recently seen in the film ‘Three of Us’ and will also star in a show for a streaming platform (which he has also written) smiles that he is enjoying the attention that comes with being on the screen.