A song for Covid warriors

KOCHI: The lockdown has brought out the artist in everyone. People are experimenting with various things by knocking awake their latent talents. In the case of Dr Jaiz John, who works as a radiologist at Aster Medcity, his new project is one which saw his family pitching in their talents too.“I have a deep-rooted passion for music. So during the lockdown, I and my family thought of coming up with a music video that celebrated the warriors of Covid-19, specially the medical fraternity. The song urges everyone to join the fight against the pandemic. This is a full-fledged in-home production. The video briefly delves into the effect of the lockdown on a child,” he said. Titled ‘Let’s fight corona: A father and son lockdown story’, the music video was posted on YouTube last month and has received positive reviews. 

According to Dr Jaiz, many requested him to do a song related to the pandemic during the lockdown. “Though I initially thought I may not get time, I got a couple of weeks off from my official duties when I was asked to stay home as part of a reserve team of doctors. So, I decided to honour the many requests that came my way,” said Dr Jaiz.

“I decided not to come up with a parody as it’s a common social media trend now. I chose to do the video in English because the pandemic is a global issue,” he said. As to the method that he adopted to make the video, Dr Jaiz said, “Because of the lockdown, my usual way of making a music video with other fellow professionals was out of the question. But I was comfortable composing the music, writing the lyrics and recording. I was able to do everything at my home studio.”

However, it was a challenging task considering the restrictions imposed. “I had never done a video on my own. However, with what I learnt from my earlier experiences of being part of the music team and with the help of the internet, I was able to make a technical plan for the shoot. While I started the shoot with the help of my wife Navya Philip, my younger son joined me in the video. This made me change the concept of the video and highlight the lockdown effects that a child is experiencing. We used a smartphone and a small DSLR camera to shoot this,” said Dr Jaiz.  

For Dr Jaiz, this is not his first rodeo. He has dabbled in music production earlier too. “‘Ariyathe Ninayathe’ was my first Malayalam melody released in 2013 with Vineeth Sreenivasan as the singer. It has garnered more than 10 million hits on YouTube. But after that, I had to join my medical post-graduation and so I could not take up further musical assignments,” said Dr Jaiz. His major upcoming track is a Tamil uptempo song in collaboration with an Indian-American artist.