Singing his way to fame: Hemanth Jois on his latest EP and more

Hemanth Jois
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Hemanth Jois is an independent singer who is slowly but surely etching his fame as a promising music director in the Kannada film industry. A self-taught guitarist and composer, he has to his credit many video albums released under his own banner — The Jois Project and he is also an active performer of -the band Naik and the Jois Project, which was founded by him in 2017. The band has recently returned from its US tour.

Hemanth speaks about his latest EP, “Sleeping with The Snakes”, from which the first song Paralysed released in April this year on his YouTube channel, The Jois project, and has gone viral ever since. The uniqueness of the EP, says Hemanth, is that “it is my first English song. I love rock and it has influenced me all through my musical journey and career. Also when it comes to rock, I believe people connect when it talks about real life incidents or emotions. One common theme or incident that everyone has experienced is betrayal. It can be a betrayal in friendship, love, family or by colleagues. Everyone has experienced this and I wanted to use that and create rock music for ‘Sleeping With the Snakes’ and that is how the song came to be,” says the 32-year-old self taught guitarist, who gives singer-composer Raghu Didit the credit for the title Sleeping with the Snakes. There are five songs in this EP and I plan to release one song every 45 days.”

“He lives down the lane from where I live and we spend quite a few evenings discussing music and just talking. One evening when we were having a serious discussion, he said something like, ‘when you grow up, you realise you are sleeping with snakes’. That hit me hard and immediately I told him I would make it the title of my EP and that is how my work commenced,” shares Hemanth, who has till date released 26 songs as an independent musician with Tunturu being his first for which he won the Best Independent Artist (Kannada International Music Awards KIMA 2017-18), Shankarnag Youth Icon Award.

With actor Ajay
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Though Hemnath has never has worked with Raghu, he calls him his “inspiration. He has had a huge impact on me when it comes to Kannada rock genre as it is not easy to stand out as an independent artiste and survive as a full time musician when the music world is dominated by the cinema industry music. Hence, Raghu is an icon as a musician and he has proved that a singer can stand, irrespective of the challenges,” shares Hemanth, who as a musician himself, believes, “compsoing music for films does give an added edge, simply because if the film and the song becomes a hit, then it gives more traction to my own music.”

Hemanth, who also started off as an independent musician, talks about the difference between composing for his own independent track and movies. “You work with a free hand when you create music for yourself, but as a film composer, you work within the boundary of what the director, story and film demands or needs. So you may end up creating something that may not be close to your heart and despite this if the song does well then the complete credit should go to the film director because he knew this vision or music would work,” says the musician who hails from the Malnad region.

Statement 8/11 followed by Aranyakanda, Entha Kathe Maaraya, Thimmana Mottegalu are some of the films he has composed music for, besides having 400 shows across the country and the States as an independent singer. He has worked with singers like Neeti Mohan and Hari Charan and Hemanth is also the composer of the theme track for PUBG Mobile India Official. 

Another hurdle that Hemanth had to cross as a film composer was his dependency on guitar. “My music is heavily into guitar, so when a director approaches me and asks me to create something without the guitar, that is a track I take head on. Because of this I have almost stopped working or using the guitar and am more inclined to work with other form of orchestra type stringed instruments, like the violin, veena..,”

The musician, currently basking in the success of the musical track of the film Chow Chow Bath is awaiting the release of Ajay Rao’s Yudhakanda (he has worked on the BGM and one song), and Venkya as a full-fledged music director.  Hemanth Jois is also concurrently working on releasing the remining tracks of his debut EP Sleeping With Snakes.