Sandalwood unites to celebrate friendship

Promotional songs and videos are all the rage in Kannada cinema. More often than not, it features the cast, in a special number that is not part of the film, or has sneak peeks from the movie to give audiences an idea of what to expect. Occasionally, though, the promotional material has other prominent faces from the industry pledging their support to the project. One such is part of the upcoming Kannada film

Buckaasuura

’s publicity material. Called the

Friendship Song

, this number features as many as 60 names from Kannada cinema, grooving to the lyrics that promote the idea of unity.
Interestingly, no one from the team of Buckaasuura is in the song, and that, says lead actor

Rohitt

, was a conscious choice.
“The idea to have a promotional number actually came up during our earlier project, Karvva, which had no songs. We got around to doing it this time around, so we thought it best to not have anyone from the film in the video. As for the song itself, during my years as a jockey on radio, I have often heard actors and actresses maintain that there is no star war in the Kannada industry and that it has been made up by the media. So, I thought why not reinforce that and have an all-star video for my film.”
The lyrics by newbie Manvarish N capture that sentiment that we have one day, one life, so let’s be together and support each other. “I then got our music director, Avinash P, to compose a tune that has a celebratory feel to it. As part of our endeavour to foster local talent, we brought in playback singer Nakul to sing it. Once the song was in place, I decided to speak to a bunch of stars, considering that everyone’s been nice to me over the years. At the most, I thought we would get 30 to do a jig, but we ended up with 60,” says Rohitt.
The first to be a part of the song was J Karthik, who even went on to sing it, until he was told that he only had to lip sync. “In fact, that was a concern that some of the actresses had, as the song is in a male voice. But we just asked them to do whatever came to mind and many were very sporting to send us clippings. For instance, Parul Yadav was in London when we asked her and she sent us her bit.

Shanvi

Srivastava was in Italy shooting for Tarak, yet did her portion. Everyone was very cooperative and I have to thank each one of them for their support. Special mention goes to

Shivarajkumar

, who recorded his bit and then called in to say that he wanted to do it even better. He was busy at the time and got back to us 10 days later after having rehearsed his segment,” says Rohitt.