Going daddy’s way?

Not out of college yet but Shankar Mahadevan’s son - Siddharth is already going great guns. With two songs from Bhaag Milkha Bhaag - Zinda and the rock version of the title track - under his belt, Siddharth has a head start.

He has trained in Hindustani Classical and Carnatic Classical vocals, he says. ‘Though I grew up with music all around me, I was never forced to learn it. It came to me naturally,’ he adds. His first stint with something professional was when he got to record some mouth percussions for his father’s album Breathless. 

Siddharth is currently pursuing his graduation in Mass Media and besides going the family way, he also has plans to try his hand in making movies. ‘I don’t want to restrict myself,’ says Siddharth. 

So how did Bhaag Milkha Bhaag happen? Siddharth says that SEL (Shankar Ehsaan and Loy) were working on the music and he would often drop into the studio. Rakesh Omprakash Mehra had heard him sing for a Greenpeace project earlier and asked him to sing the songs for him. ‘I took it as a joke, he used to ask me to sing often - but I never took it seriously!’ says Siddharth. But then he did sing and the results are quite a hit. 

And what tops his own playlist these days - Jack Johnson’s From Here to Now to You album; Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, Macklemore’s Thrift Shop, Amit Trivedi’s work in Lootera and Banarasiya from Raanjhnaa he lists.  While he rues that heavy duty classical Taans is something he cannot do yet and hopes he learns, he picks out AR Rahman, Amit Trivedi, Vishal Shekhar and Salim Sulaiman as music directors he wants to work with. This boy has our thumbs up!