Malayalam music composer Prince George wants to take to singing next

Scoring for the Malayalam film Mohan Kumar Fans hit home closer than his other projects for composer Prince George. The plot follows the life of an aspiring singer Krishnan Unni (played by Kunchacko Boban) who participates in a music reality show in a bid to make it to the film industry.

Prince’s journey to films happened via that route; in 2004, as a 15-year-old, he won second place in the music reality show Gandharva Sangeetham Junior which aired on Kairali TV. “That win was long ago. I wanted to learn the technical aspect of filmmaking and sound because films were always part of the plan,” he says.

So, despite winning a singing competition, he turned his attention to sound engineering. Prince then graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune before moving to Mumbai in 2012 to work as sound director/composer. His diploma film Allah is Great was the official selection for the Student Oscar Awards; he was the music composer for the Omani film Azeel, and worked as the sound designer for the short film Kids in Suits and Goodbye Mayfly (Kashmiri short) besides the documentary Reflecting Her.

In 2017, he returned to Kerala with a desire to make it into Malayalam films, much like the protagonist of Mohan Kumar Fans.

He made his Malayalam debut with Vijay Super Pournamiyum (2019) also directed by Jis Joy. He has had to wait a year for the release of Mohan Kumar Fans, but the wait has been worth it due to the feedback. “Feedback has been great and the songs are doing well; the songs are important in the narrative since it is placed at crucial junctures.”

Despite Malayalam cinema’s minimal song trend, this film’s seven songs gave Prince the space to try out various genres such as devotional, melody, koothu and funky. “Different genres of music are for the film’s different moods. Plus I got to work with singers such as KS Chithra, Vijay Yesudas, Shweta Mohan, Benny Dayal and Rimi Tomy besides others.” He too has sung a song in the film.

Since he is now composing music in Malayalam, how about pursuing a singing career in parallel since he is trained in Carnatic and Hindustani classical music? “I want to pursue both. I want to be a singer-composer,” he adds.