Loved the Indian Harry Potter theme? He's the guy who made Harry meet Shruti

He's a Potterhead and he loves classical music. No wonder Mahesh Raghvan put the two together and made a song that's not getting out of our heads
The Harry Potter Indian theme should be what you're listening to in a loop
The Harry Potter Indian theme should be what you're listening to in a loop

Imagine Harry Potter as an Indian. Maybe then Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would have shooed away Hagrid with a hairpin, Harry would have remained a muggle in Madras and ended up studying BE Mechanical Engineering and not Magic. 

Not our words. That's what Mahesh Raghvan says. You probably don't know him, but there's every chance you've heard his Indian classical take on the Harry Potter theme. Titled 'Harry Potter - The Ultimate Indian Theme' this is the song that Indian. It's the kind of musical tribute that would have made original score composer John Williams proud. It's also what Potterheads everywhere are listening to on loop.

The video also has some nice VFX work where it looks like a floating hand(s) is/are playing all the instruments. Very, very Hogwarts it is. If you haven't seen it, please go check it out right now:

And yes, he's the same person who gave us the lovely Indian classical versions of Adele's Hello, GoT Theme and Luis Fonsi's Despacito. When we caught up with the artist, he had quite a lot to share about his music, Indian versions of Western music and of course, Pottermania. Excerpts from a conversation:

The internet is going crazy about the Indian Harry Potter. How did the idea come up? 

Harry Potter has been the most requested piece on my YouTube Channel. A lot of my friends and family have been persuading me to do it, so it was more of a request than an idea I came up with. I started thinking of ideas for the piece a year ago, but I waited for quite a while before I was convinced that it would work. I started working on the music 4 months ago and that took a month to complete. After that, a couple of my friends Tharun Joseph and Amitha Arun, who are VFX artists came up with the concept for the video and started production. Since it had to be done really well, it took them 2-3 months to finalise the video for it.

Tell us about your music journey.

I started my training in classical music at the age of 4, have been practicing music since then.

You've done quite a lot of fusion projects. Of them, which was the toughest?

The Harry Potter one has been the most difficult fusion project so far because the lead melody line is extremely western and doesn’t fit into any of the Indian Raagas. I had to modify it a lot to be able to come up with a fusion piece for it.

Which is your favourite project?

Out of all my projects, I loved working on the ‘Thillana 2.0’ series, along with my good friends Sharanya Srinivas and Shravan Sridhar.

What are the projects that you're working on currently?

I am currently working on a few pieces which are going to be part of the IndianRaga India Fellowship; apart from that I have a lot of collaborations planned with other artists, plus I am focusing on taking the act live.

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