Meet the Kerala pianist behind the viral cover of ‘Doore Kizhakkudikkum’

The fingers of his right hand moving swiftly over a piano, the left hand accompanying along, Vinesh U is playing a very popular Malayalam film song of the late 80s. He doesn’t, as he plays it, anticipate the kind of reactions it is going to bring. But within days, the number of views for ‘Doore Kizhakkudikkum', a song from the hugely popular film Chithram, has shot up to nearly two lakh. Comments, about the memory trips it takes people to, keep pouring in. Vinesh, who has been uploading reel after reel of piano covers on his Instagram page, is pleasantly surprised by the new attention it has brought him. “It was during COVID-19 lockdowns that I began putting out reels. There have been quite a few covers but for some reason ‘Doore Kizhakkudichu’ had an unexpected reach. I was unsure if people would find the recreation of a song so popular acceptable. But a lot of people said it brought back a lot of memories. After this, I began getting more and more suggestions for playing certain BGMs and covers,” Vinesh says.       View this post on Instagram            A post shared by Vinesh U (@vinesh.pianist)  He is a full time musician based in Palakkad, playing for stage programmes in solo and group, and also teaching piano online. “I began learning the piano when I was six years old. My dream in those days was that I should be able to play a song on my own,” he says.       View this post on Instagram            A post shared by Vinesh U (@vinesh.pianist)  These days, all it takes for him is to listen to a song in the morning and he will be on his piano, playing it out, recording it and taking it to his Instagram page. He does Hindi and Tamil film songs too, and occasionally an English soundtrack. ‘Vaseegara’ from Minnale, the BGM of Kilukkam, the soundtrack of Interstellar, ‘Thaabangale’ of 96 have all done well, especially with celebrities like Vineeth Sreenivasan, Vidhu Prathap and Gopi Sunder sharing his work. Vinesh began collaborating with artistes like Harish Sivaramakrishnan of the band Agam.       View this post on Instagram            A post shared by Harish Sivaramakrishnan (@hsrkofficial)  “I also composed a song called ‘Anandha Alaigal’, which was rendered by Najim Arshad,” Vinesh says. He has not worked in films yet, and prefers to play his keytar for live performances. But the new popularity after the Chithram song gives him little time to pursue all of it.   #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Sign up to get The Next Wave in your inbox * indicates required Email Address * Name * (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);