Jeanne Merchant, who captivated audiences with her album Yeh Wadiyaan way back in 2002, has been making some great music all these years away from all the hype that musicians usually create.
The celebrated vocal coach and wife of composer Salim (of Salim–Sulaiman duo) Merchant, recently released a club friendly track Lucky Tonight, in collaboration with renowned rapper EpR.
Excerpts from the interview:
What does Lucky Tonight speak about and what was the inspiration?
The song Lucky Tonight is about an escape from whatever it is you routinely do in your usual life, to something more fantastical and adventurous. The inspiration was just a night out about town, club hopping, driving around, sitting under the stars and imagining a fun time.
What prompted you to bring rapper EpR Iyer for the song?
I love spoken word, and rap, and listen to artists like Kanye West, Pharrel Williams, Travis Scott, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and so it seemed natural to bring EpR onto this as he brings a lot of conviction and energy and good attitude to what it is he’s conveying through his spoken word and his vibe totally matched mine on this song in terms of lyric too.
Producer Anshuman Sharma has done a lot of work for Merchant Records and all the songs you have done so far have been with him. Comment.
Anshuman and I have worked together since my first release Fake Love. He’s a thorough genius with his work and completely gets what I’m saying. He adds his beats, samples to create amazing electronic grooves and mid -sections to the compositions in such a way as to convey the tune and the lyric meaningfully.
Tell us about the video of Lucky Tonight.
The video is made by Tushar Mahajan, who has worked on all my videos. He’s extremely creative and very good with ideas, lighting, concepts and putting everything together. For Lucky Tonight, he shot 9 sets, 5 looks in 18 hours. You should all head to YouTube and watch the video.
Tell us something about this song Round and Round, with a political agenda.
Round and Round came about as a result of all that was going on during Covid and the unavailability of vaccines, and hospitals and people dying as a result of it. At the same time there was a lot going on in the West with regard to Asian hate, Black Lives, and so all my feelings of frustration about all of this just culminated in Round and Round.
Almost 20 years ago you released a Hindi pop album Yeh Wadiyaan with Salim-Sulaiman on board. Was it during the making of this album that you met Salim, your future husband?
Yes. After releasing Yeh Wadiyaan, a Hindi pop album, all seven songs of which were composed by me and produced by Salim- Sulaiman, and yes that’s how I met Salim, my husband, we soon got married and had our daughter and so I took a break from singing at public events and shows just to be home with her. Salim was already doing amazing in his career and I felt like if one of us is really busy and working on their career, the other should be home and available for the baby. I started teaching vocals instead and am a certified voice coach, teaching voice for 13 years now. I have students from Berkeley, NYU Tisch (New York University Tisch School of the Arts) who I have trained for auditions, young singer songwriters, teachers of music and every other type of student as well.
Is your daughter Ayesha also into music?
Ayesha too sings and plays piano and ranked 1st in Mumbai at the Trinity college of London exams for Classical piano. Ayesha has varied other interests too like dance, ballet, aerial gymnastics as well as the study of the human mind and behaviour. She’s currently studying all of this in the U.K.
You have been a singer, songwriter and voice coach for the 13 years. Tell us more about what you do.
As a voice teacher I give my students all the tools they need to be able to sound however they want to sound and become technically strong so that they don’t have to struggle with whatever it is they want to do with their vocal cords. Like I mentioned earlier, I train students for their auditions to get into music universities and help up and coming singers and songwriters to get it all together apart from teaching other teachers of voice and professional singers too. I have also been writing music for a while now but it was only due to the break during Covid that I was able to have the time to actually record, produce, shoot and release the songs. Since then I’ve been consistently releasing music on Merchant Records as with Merchant Records artists like me get the full freedom to create with a free mind and be the artists we’ve always wanted to be. As an Independent artist I’ve released 8 songs in the past 2 years including two Christmas songs as well as a few covers.
You learnt Hindustani music from Suresh Wadkar. Did this help in your album Yeh Wadiyaan?
Learning Hindustani music gave me a different sort of discipline and did different things to my voice. My album was a Hindi pop album but that discipline certainly did help with what I was doing with Hindi pop at the time.
Is there any remarkable work that Salim has done that you feel really proud of?
Salim is a genius musician and extremely hard working at his craft and I love everything he touches, but I’m especially proud of the work he’s done for Coke Studio and his film scores and all the fabulous music in ‘Bhoomi 2020’, ‘Bhoomi 2021’, Bhoomi 2022’ and now everyone’s so looking forward to the imminent release of ‘Bhoomi 2024’ It is just next level. I love it and his passion for music is at its height and so contagious and inspiring for me and so many others.
You and Salim are accomplished musicians. Have you ever asked him or vice versa for his opinion or advice on any of the compositions that have been made from either of you? Have there been any disagreements on any of yours or his musical works?
It’s great to have a partner who is also so passionate about music and we naturally become each other’s sounding boards. We speak our opinion on things but beyond a point whoever’s project it is, is the one that makes the final decision, creative or otherwise. So, yeah, no disagreements as our work is separate and different.
You are a jazz person at heart, you haven’t released any jazz styled songs.
I started my career as a jazz singer but along the way got fully into R&B, rap, pop and even musical theatre. I’ve listened to Billie Holiday and Chick Correa as much as I’ve listened to Chaka Khan or Ariana Grande, Quincy Jones, Phantom of the Opera or Jacob Collier. These are all my influences and I could write my songs in any of these genres depending on what the mood is when I sit down to write.
We never really see you at major Bollywood parties and social events. Do you prefer staying out of sight from the media glare?
I teach vocals 8 hours a day and whatever time I have left over after voice coaching, (which usually goes late into the night) I then use it to create my art. I’m essentially a creator at heart and have a lot of ideas and a lot to say and 24 hours in a day is not enough time for me to do all the songwriting and other music related things I want to do, which is probably why you don’t see me at many social events.
You are an accomplished pianist, but you have never really worked on piano music, as in your vocals and piano in a song.
I use my piano playing skills to compose music, but then so much of my music is electronic sounding and doesn’t need piano playing as such. I use the piano to teach vocals, to accompany students while they sing and to write and compose my music.
Did you at any point want to sing in Bollywood films considering your husband is a music director?
Today the lines between Bollywood and Independent music are blurred and independent music could easily be the soundscape of a Bollywood film with no typical “Bollywood” sound being really identifiably necessary. Salim has Merchant Records and big projects like ‘Bhoomi’ and ‘Soundcheck’ under his banner and so I can no longer think of him either as “just” Bollywood. For me, I’m open to doing anything that I vibe with, never mind the genre, language, country. If it’s a good fit for me I will do it.
