A game(p)lan for the environment

CHENNAI : When he was a kid, he grew up listening to Tupac and other American hip hop musicians. But unlike most kids, it wasn’t the “gangsta stuff” that caught his attention, but the message each song carried. “Look at Tupac’s Dear Mama  for instance,” rapper BlaaZe offers as an example. It taught him that he could tell a story; convey a message through music.And that’s exactly what he’s been doing since then, including his recent work in collaboration with Singapore-based percussionist Mohamed Noor, for his debut album Rebirth . BlaaZe, who features in two songs on the album, has written one for the environment. “When Noor sent me the gamelan (a traditional Indonesian ensemble of instruments, mostly percussion) track, I thought it sounded like the environment,” says BlaaZe, visibly failing at first attempt to convey what he felt. He tries again, “The Buddhist sound of it, the beats of the drums – it all somehow translated into peace and greenery for me.”And since the environment is a subject that “hasn’t been musically touched upon too much”, and of course, since our man is always about the message, he wrote Gamelan – The Environment Speaks .The other song that BlaaZe has worked on in the album is Ayo. “This song was originally written by Noor’s former band mate (from the band Tribal Tide) the late Edmond Branson Jr. We completely reworked the original and I wrote some stuff about him and his passing away,” says BlaaZe, whom we’ve heard in popular tracks such as Rajini’s Baba  and Dating  from Shankar’s Boys.And just few days after the album’s release last week, BlaaZe came up with another impromptu song for the environment, Murderer murderer  – a song that Priyanka Chopra rapped on live television!But like everyone knows, it’s one thing to go out there and produce some beats that are meant to create awareness about a particular cause, but it’s something else to make people sit up and take action. Says BlaaZe, “It may not change the attitude of many, but it will definitely hit that one listener who responds to it.” It is that change that he is able to instil in one such guy that “makes it all worthwhile”, he says. “It can only spread from there on if your message is sincere. And that’s it. You’ve done something with your music,” adds a contented BlaaZe.