Luke Kenny’s dream is to unite music and movies

Luke Kenny performs with a band of merry musicians under the tag Luke Kenny LIVE.
Born in Kolkata, Luke was brought up in Mumbai and went on to star in films like Rock On!! and Rise Of The Zombies. He has a varied family tree, owing his Irish-British-Italian parentage, with an Indian twist. “Music has always been around me. My grandfather was a jazz drummer in his time, so he would play his records.My dad had a band in his time so I grew up on the music of the latter 20th century.
READ: I love Delhi, but not its people, says Luke Kenny
My grandmother was huge Hindi film fan so all the popular songs would be always playing in my head. Add to that my own personal journey as I went through school and college and beyond. Music has always been my best friend,” he says. From his dad playing Bohemian Rhapsody on a cassette one lazy afternoon to him watching Sholay as a child on the big screen and being stunned by the genius of RD Burman, his fondest childhood memories are also musical.
Naturally, he has many inspirations from many different genres and eras of popular music. “Some of the strong ones are The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bjork,” he says.
Luke worked as a DJ for a while, before breaking into the public eye in 1995 when he became a veejay for a music channel. “I have been performing live since I was in college. I was part of a band called Greek and we played only original music. As a result, we got booed off the stage a few times as audiences at that time only wanted to hear covers of popular songs. And although times have marginally changed since then, it is still a struggle to get audiences to appreciate and consume original music,” says the ageless performer.
Ask him what his sound is like, and he says, “One of the primal reasons for creating sound is to get the body to move in self-entertaining ways. So my music will always be a sound you can move to, whether you want to jive to it, headbang, pump your hand in the air, bounce or just simply sway.”
He last performed in Pune to a large audience. “It was a fantastic gig. I am scheduled to do one in Bandra on May 28 and another in Worli on June 4,” he says. He wishes the indie music scene in the city got a better platform, though. “I am saddened by the fact that in spite of having such great talent, we do not have enough quality live venues that can justify that talent and bring it to more audiences,” he says.
Luke’s dream is to unite music and movies. “Along with music, films are also a large part of who I am, so I am always in the endeavour of prospecting for ways to unite the two. I am developing film scripts and stories where music will play a large role as well as music and songs that can fit into these very stories.”
LISTEN: Songs of Luke Kenny on Gaana.com
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