Maalavika Manoj

In July 2012

In this Indian name, the name Manoj is a patronymic, not a family name, and the person should be referred to by the given name, Maalavika.

Maalavika Manoj, (b. 16 September 1993) also known as Mali,^[1]^[2] is an Indian independent musician and songwriter based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

Early life

Maalavika was born on 16 September 1993^[3] in Chennai to Malayali parents from North Malabar.^[4] Maalavika had been listening to music a lot since childhood. Though her parents were not musicians, they would play a lot of 1970s and 1980s style music to her, even though she was only fairly young. Her father listened to a lot of electronic music from the early 1990s and she grew up listening to a lot of the same as well. When Maalavila was five years old, her parents decided to enroll her in various classes ranging from swimming and Bharat Natyam to piano and drawing classes. A few years later, she quit all of her classes other than piano, which she learned till she was 17 years old. Around that time, she also decided to try her hand at the guitar as well, because at that point she felt it was really "cool".^[5] She did her schooling at Sacred Heart Matriculation School^[6] and studied for a BBA at Loyola College, Chennai.^[1] In mid 2013, she left for France to complete her BBA degree, but returned to Chennai in July 2014 after completing it.^[7]^[8]

Career

At Maithri (the cultural events of Chettinad Vidyashram), she was named the "Best Vocalist". RJ Arjun Thomas heard her there and suggested that she form a band to join the radio station Chennai Live's "band hunt" that was taking place at the time. The band was eventually formed under the name "Bass-in-Bridge" with Sajith as its bassist, Leon as the keyboardist, and Arjun as the guitarist.^[6] The band however dissolved the following year, with Maalavika becoming a solo artist.^[4] She was also featured in the "Sachin Anthem" composed by Dhanush.^[9]^[10]

Deceptive

Her debut album Deceptive was released on 16 June 2013.^[2] It was mixed by the US-based Grammy award winning composer/mixer/producer Anton Pukshansky. The album also features other artists like Ujjayinee Roy, Karthick Iyer, "Ghatam" Karthik and Ed DeGenaro, all of whom helped Maalavika with the instrumentals. According to Manoj, the album has "a mix of styles such as jazz, electronic, blues and so on" and she compares it to "a box of assorted chocolates – something for everyone".^[11] The song "No Place Like Home", which Maalavika considers "the tune dearest to her on the album" was composed over a period of three years; she wrote it when she was 16 years old.^[2] It took her 15 months to finish the whole album.^[1]

Tracklisting^[12]

Song	Duration
This One's for You	3:32
Deceptive	4:12
It's Not the Same	4:37
No Place Like Home	4:54
Wannabe	3:44
Undefined	5:06

Other works

Although primarily an independent musician, Maalavika has sung for a few feature films in Tamil. Her first film song was "Come on Girls", composed by Anirudh Ravichander for 3 (2012), although she considers her role to be a small part of the film.^[1]^[13] Her other film songs include "Yeda Kuda..." from Kaliyugam,^[14] "Vaazhkaiye" from Haridas (2013),^[15] and "Hi My Name Is Malini" from Malini 22 Palayamkottai (2014).^[16]

References