Kochi rock act Motherjane has a new single out called ‘Jihad’ which released midnight August 20. ‘Jihad’ is part of the soundtrack for Malayalam movie Anwar, a film about the effect of terrorism on the lives of Muslims. The song is the band’s effort to change their perspective about Jihad or holy war, by making listeners realise the heart of every religion is essentially the same.
For all hate is poison
Distilled from pain
& what’s alien to heaven
Is practiced in vainI believe in Jihad
If love is the weapon
Check out the lyrics here and the idea behind the song here. We caught up with Motherjane frontman Suraj Mani and talked to him about the film soundtrack.
The film is about the effect of terrorism on the lives of normal Muslims, do you expect to change listeners’ outlook with this song?
Yeah I think it’s already doing that. That’s all that I want to happen actually out of the whole thing. Whatever good that comes out of it… sometimes songs can make a difference. Sometimes the thought can make a difference. I think a lot of people are catching onto that line, “I believe in Jihad if love is the weapon.”
How did the soundtrack happen?
Well, we have one of our directors in our record label actually, so we spoke to this director and he said, “Why don’t you make an OST, an experiment kind of thing.” And then the director, being one of those forward thinking Malayalam directors, he knows and likes our band, so he said Ok guys, make a song. So I asked him, English? He said Ok. I said, Rock? He said Ok. We asked him what the story was, so he gave me a brief peek into the concepts, based on which I wrote these particular lyrics.
Anwar is a Malayalam film written and directed by Amal Neerad. The film will release in September.
You can stream the track on the band’s ReverbNation page.
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