Memory's loose ends: Delhi-born composer Jayant Sankla on his latest song 'Musalsal'
Love is quiet, soft, and often unexpected like a breeze brushing past or impossible to hold still. That's the feeling at the heart of 'Musalsal', the latest track by Delhi-born singer-songwriter and composer Jayant Sankla. 'Musalsal', is derived from Arabic. 'It means continuous, something that keeps going and never stops,' says Sankla. Drawn first to its sound, it was the Urdu poetry of Mirza Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, that drew him first to the word. 'The word stayed with me while listening to Pritam Chakraborty's song Phir Le Aaya Dil. I had been writing freely, letting the lyrics take shape. That's when musalsal just clicked with me.'
The track is intentionally bare, with slow guitar strums and the soft rhythm of the mandolin trailing behind his vocals. 'If the melody is simple like the feelings in the song, it's easily understood,' he says. 'If the lyrics say one thing, the melody another, and the music is on a different trip, it feels like cheating—at least to myself. If what I'm thinking and making don't align, the listener will feel that disconnect too.'
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