Taking up music was a leap of faith for V S Akhil Vinay who dreamt of becoming a doctor. It didn’t go wrong. Music gave a new direction to this 23-year-old who started losing his eye sight from the age of nine. He is making rapid strides with his band, AcousticA. A mashup cover, 10 Kanakkinu Acapella, featuring acapella versions of 10 popular film numbers, was released on Friday.
There are Malayalam, Tamil, English and Hindi numbers in the album. He had earlier released the acapella version of the song Tharapadham... from Anaswaram.
Tuning in
“Harmony has been my forte since I was part of a church choir for long and I think acapella is the best way to make people understand harmony. In fact, in 2015, I had released harmony versions of three Malayalam songs along with their videos, but many people asked me what was unique about that. Next I did a three-part harmony of the song Kadavathoru thoni... from Poomaram and that was appreciated.
That is when I felt that there is nothing better than using human voices to highlight the charm of harmony and that’s how I tried my hand at acapella with Tharapadham,” he explains.
Among the 10 songs in 10 Kanakkini Acapella are tracks such as Mundhinam parthene (Vaaranam Aayiram), Alakadaloli... (Urumi), Kolaveri... (3), Dhoom machale... (Dhoom 3), Deerane (Baahubali) and Entammede jimikki kammal (Velipadinte Pusthakam). “I selected popular tracks because I wanted to prove that acapella can be done with songs of any genre,” he says.
Akhil says that he has experimented a nine-part harmony in Deerane.... “In Mundhinam… we recorded voices in different parts to produce the sound of the guitar. I have used four key changes to connect the songs,” he adds. It took six months for him to finish the product. Besides Akhil and the 12-member acapella team, the other singers are Anamika P S and Savanna Suraj. The mashup ends with a tribute to Mohanlal.
A graduate from Sri Swathi Thirunal College of Music, Akhil says that he gets all support from his mother, Sheeja Albert, and his brother V S Amal Vinay. “Amal helps me to feed the music notes on the computer. I need that to teach the choir,” he says.
Music fills his hours, as he is learning Carnatic and Western music, classical guitar and plectrum guitar. A karate practitioner, Akhil plans to do his post graduation in music. “My aim is to become a harmoniser,” he adds. Among his favourites musicians are J S Bach, Ilaiyaraaja and A R Rahman.
The album is available on the channel AcousticA Music Band.