Huliraaya’s tribute to Kannada folk songs that include English lyrics

A little known fact is that Aravind Kaushik’s upcoming Kannada film Huliraaya was first scripted without any songs in it. This Friday, the film, which stars Balu Nagendra and Divya Uruduga in the lead roles, has not one but five songs composed by Arjun Ramu. How?
Here’s the flashback:
“When I finished the first draft of the film, Huliraaya was a songless film. The storytelling was rapid and I felt that the induction of songs in the film would cut down the pace of the film.And then, one day, when we were at a forest region for a location recce, somewhere near Hebri, Karnataka, we came across a bunch of youngsters with painted faces singing and dancing. The song had strange lyrics, it did not sound like Kannada either. Instead, it had traces of English. Now, the English language being part of homegrown folk songs was indeed strange. I recall my grandmother, in her village, would sing a song that had English words which she herself was not aware of. She just sang it without knowing the meaning of the lyrics. It was fascinating to note that even though the British left our country so many decades ago, their language has remained with us in ways that we did not even realize it had. So in Huliraaya, we had a situation where an old man speaks about how times are changing, civilization is evolving. I converted that bit of storytelling into a song — one that included English lyrics in an authentic Kannada folk song. That is how the song, Aane is da elephanta… jinke is the dears… mudde is the raga ball aa... jigari jaggery undebella… What is your name ringa ringa… Englishu yekkuttoga, came about,” he says.
Another inspiration came in the form of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire. “It talks about a lot of incidents, people and revolutions that have shaped world history. Similarly, through the Aane song, I wanted to talk about the changing times through phrases. You will see now that this song speaks of a post independent India which is evolving, where things are happening, trees in forests getting cut, cities and towns are growing. All these aspects were brought into the song with major usage of English words and the result has been great as even small kids have loved the song,” he explains. Aravind adds, “Probably the first Kanglish song in the industry, it is easy to sing along even if you have heard it just once.”
While that became the first song included in Huliraaya, the rest of the songs followed thanks its music director. “Arjun came up with such a good number here that I immediately sat down to write another version of the film where, this time, I had decided to have more songs. I converted certain scenes into song moments and as a result, Huliraaya now has five songs instead of none,” says Aravind.