CHENNAI: March 11 is a day that Japan will never forget. The effect of the tsunami and earthquake that lashed Japan last year is not something that the island nation got over easily. But a year later, Chennai's best musical talents have given them something to help ease the bad memories. Young and aspiring music producer Joshua Satya has released a song, sung almost entirely in Japanese, called Hold On Makenaide, on YouTube - and the response has been stunning. Incidentally, Makenaide means 'Never Give Up' in Japanese and that's pretty much the message in the song, explains Satya, "We hope that people still have it in them to stick around and keep holding on."Doing a tribute song for those affected in the Great Eastern tsunami, is something that he began a long time ago, "I've always wanted to do something for Japan, considering the amount they've done for me - this is just my little way of giving back," says Satya, best known as the guitarist of a few bands around the city, particularly 'Washed Clothes'. Apparently, all his music equipment is from Japan.Just about then he got busy with doing a similar tribute for the tsunami affected in Chennai on December 26, so this song sat in cold storage for a while. "After that, we took this up again and finished the song in English. That's when the idea of doing it in Japanese struck me," he says.They roped in Akahito, a Japanese expat who works with the Consulate in Chennai, "Being a musician himself, he took our English lyrics and managed to preserve the good emotion and gave it to us in Japanese," adds Satya. Once that fell into place, Satya who composed, arranged, co-wrote the lyrics and even sang a part of the song, roped in 13 of Chennai's best known singers to lend their voice, "Like any good tribute song, we figured that having different voices, sung in a line by line format would work best," he says.Once the song was complete, it was played for the acting Consul General of Japan here, who was "very excited", according to Satya. The Japanese track was even launched on Sunday formally by him.
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