My First Recording with Marcia Barette - Star singer of BONEY M.
"Dreams come true, if we have the will to dream"
Years passed, we formed a college band singing a mellowed down harmonized country numbers.Singing at a couple of programs organized at YMCA and other college dos, the band diffused quickly. I presume, none of them are into music anymore now.
I continued my journey of music, in my undergrad days till I made it considerably big in the Music Industry as a composer myself.
I had the opportunity to use the services of India fame singers like, Balasubramanyam, chitra, Hariharan, Kumar Sanu, Anuradha Paudwal,Alka Yagnik,Kavita Krishna murthy, Usha Uttup, Sunidi chauhan, KK,Shan, Suchitra Krishna moorthy, Sadhana Sargam, Suresh Wadkar,anuradha sriram, swarnalatha, and many more.
I had an opportunity to record with the Late.Jagjit Singh, but missed it due to his ill health for a film Tathagatha Buddha.
I am still yet to record with the greats of India and am sure and positive that it should happen: that is Lataji and Asha ji.
In 2009, I was driving back from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport where I spotted an hoarding of Marcia Barrette being welcomed to a Cancer Hospital in Hyderabad.Thoughts started running down randomly till a wild thought struck me. Why shouldn't, I try contacting her to sing a song for my upcoming film 'KIRKIT' a sports based film in Hindi.
I did my homework and contacted few PR agents in mumbai to get her numbers and contact information.To my surprise they located her and got her response.Entering into her sixties but still energetic and ready to sing. I spoke to Marcia and her Husband on Phone.It was a dream come true. 30 years of dreaming and you get to talk to your dream people in real.
She was ready to sing. WOW..
But this wow, started to fade slowly for the next two months and almost the possibility was thinning. Mail after mail, the correspondence was so tiring because of International Royalty rules and copyright issues, the legal formalities, commercials, agents causing hinderances, what not, all that had nothing to do with the artiste and me.So it is just not about composing a song and getting it sung by a singer, there is so much of business angle involved when it comes to commercial usage of music. After all that was sorted out the next factor was who would fly down and where to record the song?
Should she fly down to India or I visit Berlin to record the song with her. With two options, both that would add up a whopping budget to the song was not sounding practical.The other state of the art option which was cost effective was; I was at my studio in Hyderabad and she sang the song at a studio in Berlin.We were online during the song recording and I downloaded the song minutes after her rendering it.It was done, around 5pm IST the voice tracks were aligned and I burnt a sample cd by 6 pm.I had a long talk with her about the song and she was happy too for singing this and wished me good luck.
So that's how, I recorded my First song with International Singer MARCIA BARRETTE of BONEY M fame.
