No boundaries

Catchy tunes. Innovative lyrics. Music with no boundaries. Introducing…'Cross Culture,' the latest local pop album to hit the market! Literally crossing cultures and being accessible to all, regardless of even ethnicity, the album promises to be big.

Scheduled to be launched on February 14, 'Cross Culture' is the creation of Gajan Maheson and Dinesh Kanagaratnam, two versatile artistes in the local pop industry. Catching up with Gajan on a busy afternoon last week, we spoke to him about the intricacies of the album. "The main feature of 'Cross Culture' is the fact that it is a trilingual album. With every song having a mix of Sinhala, Tamil and English lyrics, it is definitely going to be a hit," he said.

The album interestingly contains 14 songs, and apart from the launch date being Valentine's Day, it also turns out to be Gajan's birthday as well! Released under Universal Music and M-Entertainment, the album will be available in Sri Lanka from February 14, and in India in three months time. "Entering into the Indian market will definitely open lots of opportunities for us, so that would be something to look out for," he added. "The main themes that run through the album are cross culture, youth, appreciation for your mum, love and hate, attitudes and courage. And with our target being school-going young people, they would be able to relate to this album very easily," he said, adding that the lyrics were a team effort, with quite a few lyrics being done by him, and the Sinhala lyrics done by the late Hemasiri Halpitiya, while Ashanthi and Randhir handled most of the English lyrics. Some of their hit songs are "Cross Culture," "Naan Sonnal," "Vinodhen" and "Romeo Juliet."

Most of you are bound to have heard the four songs already released by these artistes, and Gajan explained that the title song "Cross Culture" was initially released in Tamil and instantly became a hit with young people, getting quite a lot of air play on Tamil radio stations. "And now it's being played on Sinhala radio stations and is getting quite a good response as well. The song talks about a young person leaving Sri Lanka to study abroad, and deals with the initial phase of missing home, and having to deal with adjusting to this foreign environment, while appreciating all that's good about his own country." The artistes involved with the production of the album range from Bathiya and Santhush, Ranga Dassanayake, Ranga Jagoda and Eranga Jayawansa, to Ashanthi, Randhir, Sahan from Hasthi and Krishan from Asian Avenue. The production of the album was done at Saregama Productions, Hit Factory and DV8 Studio. With the music video for the single "Cross Culture" complete, Gajan describes it as "completely out of the box," giving all credit to Praveen Jayaratne, the producer of the video. “Our main musical influence would be the Black Eyed Peas and even our music videos are quite animated and innovative, similar to theirs,” he said.

Entering the local music industry in 1998 along with his brother Krishan Maheson, with their musical outfit Urban Sounds, they became an instant hit, quickly becoming a popular hip-hop band in Sri Lanka. Explaining that at the time they entered the music industry, the market for local pop music was quite small, but successfully grew with names like B‘n’S and now has reached international markets as well. "Sri Lanka is famous for its cricket. In the same way, we can easily create a name for ourselves in the music industry as well. This album contains an extremely varied type of music, and our main objective is to deliver high quality Sri Lankan music for the international market.

Gajan and Dinesh's newest entry to the Sri Lankan and international music will be the first local Tamil Hip-Hop and R‘n’B album to be released, after the release of the album of Gajan's brother Krishan of Asian Avenue, under Universal Music. They plan to tour the country in the next three months, performing in Colombo, Kandy, Galle and Negombo.

As for Dinesh, the other important facet in their musical outfit, he has always been involved with artistes in the local pop industry, but interestingly not with the musical aspect of things.

"Being an Art Director at an advertising firm at present, Dinesh designed most of the top-notch CD covers for most local pop artistes, including B‘n’S and Ashanthi. And he also worked with my brother, which is how I met him, and then eventually we started off about one year ago. Music is a passion for us, and our main aim is to promote trilingual music, which we think is a necessity in this country." Gajan who is in Marketing, seems to successfully balance his role as a brand manager, along with his busy music career. "As for the people who have supported us, I personally have got to say a big thank you to my parents, Krishan, the producers and of course our fans."

For all those of you who want to check out the latest happenings in the lives of Gajan and Dinesh and download their hits, www.gajandinesh.com, the duos' official website will be launched on February 14. The official energy drink for the launch of 'Cross Culture' is Red Bull, while the official soft drink is Elephant House Cream Soda and the official ice cream is Elephant House Pani Cadju ice cream. So come February 14, head over to the latest music store and experience the youthfully vibrant taste of 'Cross Culture.'