Sonil Dedhia (MID-DAY; August 11, 2017)

Farhan Akhtar’s love for music is well- known — the actor has crooned several numbers in his previous outings, Rock On (2008), Rock On 2 (2016) and Dil Dhadakne Do (2015), among others. Akhtar has now tried his hand at a cappella for the song Ek Kabootar, Do Kabootar from his forthcoming film, Lucknow Central, where he plays a jailbird.

A cappella is essentially a style of singing, solo or group, without any instrument accompaniment. Director Ranjit Tiwari says the idea of including this form of music came from daily life incidents. He says, “Sometimes, when we are talking to someone, the person is tapping his foot. It is from here that we got the idea of giving these traits a musical bend. So, while writing the characters of the film, these traits naturally became a part of them.”

Producer Nikkhil Advani says that they explored the a cappella style as the song is based in jail and the inmates wouldn’t be familiar with musical instruments. “Since the jail inmates aren’t competent with musical instruments, we decided to incorporate body percussion and a cappella techniques. We got ace percussionist Taufiq Qureshi on board, he added a lot of layers to the song.”

The makers also brought world famous body percussionist Bharat Verma on board to train the actors, including Akhtar. “Everyone — Farhan, Gippy [Grewal], Deepak [Dobriyal], Rajesh [Sharma] and Inaamulhaq — submitted themselves to learning this technique and have actually performed it in the song.”