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Delhi-based musician Abhishek Ray has composed two campaign songs for the Ministry of Environment and Forest’s tiger conservation project

For as long as he can remember,Delhi-based composer Abhishek Ray has been a wildlife enthusiast,travelling to forests and signing up as a volunteer for tiger conservation projects. So when the opportunity came to compose two campaign songs for the Ministry of Environment and Forest’s tiger conservation project,Ray didn’t think twice about it. The two official theme songs have been sung by Ray and Kavita Krishnamurthy and will be released by Union Minister Jairam Ramesh at a press conference today. The songs will be translated in 15 different languages and will be played on television and radio regularly. “We hope that these songs will become popular with the people of the country,” says Ray,who is also a trained tiger tracker. In fact,Ray is a regular participant in the Ministry and National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA)-conducted tiger census that takes place every year.

The videos for the songs too are ready and will be released simultaneously. Rather than incorporating folk tunes in the songs,Ray has settled for a mish-mash of world music for the two tracks. “Tigers are found in the whole country. I did not want to mar my song with a regional bias,” says Ray.The songs will also be available for free downloads on the NTCA and Ministry of Environment and Forest websites. “The message in the songs should reach out to both urban and rural India,” he adds.

“It took me three months to produce these songs. The music has a modern texture,and incorporates bird calls,tiger roars and other animal sounds to make them more interesting,” says Ray,whose last project was a song in the film Paan Singh Tomar. He is currently working on his next Bollywood release— the music of Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Sahib Biwi aur Gangster,a remake of Guru Dutt’s iconic movie Sahib Baiwi aur Ghulam.