Phani Kalyan's new song Dharani Manninchave is all about asking forgiveness from nature

Phani Kalyan

’s latest song

Dharani Manninchave

has been making rounds on social media, with the music composer calling it ‘the lockdown confession’.

The 4-minute-long video is shot completely at home with singers

Aditya Rao

and

Sameera Bharadwaj

’s family shooting the footage for them. “Aditya lives in the US and Sameera in Chennai. Because they sang the number at their home too it took a while to get it right,” Phani tells Hyderabad Times, adding, “But the good news is that, because it’s a homemade video, there was no pressure on making it look perfect. It gave me time to focus on the music and lyrics instead of camera and lighting.”

Being a nature lover, when the novel coronavirus pandemic brought the whole world to a stop, the Karimnagar boy from Hyderabad who rose to fame with the viral dance video Neeve, wanted to do a song on mother Earth. Coincidentally, he even came across a quote by

Dalai Lama XIV

which states – Human use, population and technology have reached that certain stage where mother Earth no longer accepts our presence with silence. “I wanted people to understand that we are punishing nature, and it’s not just about corona. We have taken it for granted and we need to put an end to it all now,” he adds.

Dharani Manninchave sees lyrics by Imran Sastry, a disciple of lyricist Sitarama Sastry, with Shravan on the violin, Bharan programming it and Hemanth editing the video. There’s also a

Tamil

verion of the song, Mannikka Vendume, with Sathyaprakash and Sharanya Srinivas’ vocals and Niranjan Bharathi’s lyrics. The video for that number too was shot at their respective homes.


When asked, if he prefers composing for movies, like he did for Jodi, Nene Mukyamantri, Pappu and Konjam Koffee Konjam Kaadal, or his indie projects like Chandamama, Prema and more, he says, “I work for movies but I find making independent music much equally satisfying. In the nineties independent songs were all the rage in Hindi and even AR Rahman came out with the Vande Mataram album. That has left a deep impact on me and I like doing my own thing too.”