Mike McCleary is creating ripples in the industry by contemporarising old melodies. He chats with Karan Bhardwaj about his live project that reinvents Bollywood classics in a jazzy style
Isn’t it interesting that a foreign guy who doesn’t not even speak Hindi fluently is churning out back-to-back hit numbers and also lending contemporary touch to the old classicsIJ Mikey McCleary, a musician from New Zealand now settled in Mumbai, has created ripples in industry after giving hit music for movies like Khoya Khoya Chand, Shaadi Ke Side Effects, Nautanki Saala, Pizza and David among others.
He is now upbeat about his new single Aaj Mausam Bada. “It’s a fun video. We went to Alibag with the actors and stayed at a friend’s beautiful home in the countryside. I’m a really bad dancer but I decided to do the choreography myself. I love 70s and 80s Bollywood romance/dance scenes so I used that as my concept for the video. It’s a very simple, fun and affectionate homage to the romantic film songs of that period,” he says. Born in India, Mikey was brought up in New Zealand. But that has not affected his admiration for his India and its music. “My family moved out when I was a child but we always had a cultural atmosphere at home and the Indian connection was very strong,” he says. He was working in london as a musician when he came in contact with lucky Ali. He started composing for his songs and that’s how he got exposed the ocean of Hindi melodies.
Currently settled in Mumbai as a songwriter, composer, producer and a performer, he feels that the country has accepted and adopted him. The city, he says, is an exciting place to live in and it is here that he has re-discovered his love for old classics. “There is so much to learn from them as a musician and a composer,” he points out. How does he manage to produce Hindi music without having the sound knowledge of the languageIJ “I compose it the same way I compose any music. I usually think about the people who will be listening to the music and then I try and come up with something which will generate interest in both the audience and me. I go with my instincts,” he explains.
Drawing inspiration from the likes of Bob Dylan, David Bowie and The Beatles, who were popular for preferring live performances, Mikey says, “I love recording live musicians. Not enough music is live these days.” He is also a part of Fox life’s Sound Trek II, which will see him collaborating with local musicians. “Folk musicians bring a lot of character to a recording,” he says with a smile and adds, “The project intrigued me because I saw an opportunity to learn about the background of a few hindi songs. Moreover it would also provide the viewers a chance to see the process of how I re-invent old melodies.”
He has finished composing the songs and the background music for Shonali Bose’s Margarita With A Straw starring Kalki Koechlin and is currently working on a song for Anurag Kashyap’s Bombay Velvet. That apart, he has also released his own album TV Dinners, a collection of songs created from the popular TV ad music that he had composed over the past few years. One of his most remembered jingles continues to be the ‘Blackberry Boys’.
Mike is also engaged with The Bartender, a unique act which reinvents Bollywood classics in a jazzy seductive style. The act has singers like Shalmali Kholgade, Shibani Dandekar, Saba Azad, Mauli Dave and Suman Shridhar. Besides Mikey, there are six musicians along with singers who enthrall the audience for 90-120 minutes non-stop. “We have a 3 piece brass section which is an important part of the sound,” he says.