Reimagining an Indian Album Cover for World Music Day

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Reimagining A FoRGOTTEN INDIAN ALBUM COVER FOR World Music Day

Illustrated for an exclusive feature on #WorldMusicDay where Design Fabric asked 10 contemporary illustrators to reimagine forgotten Indian album covers.

This is my take on Kishore Kumar's album and performance in the 1968 cult classic film "Padosan".

Story by Ritupriya Basu

Type

Concept Note:

This artwork is an ode to my childhood memories of listening to “the best of Kishore Kumar” on loop in the car on road trips with my family. My parents are ardent music listeners, and back in the day, my Dad had a huge collection of cassettes of albums by Kishore Kumar, Mana Dey, Mohammed Rafi and RD Burman amongst many others. Being a passive listener of the music, my brother and I found ourselves singing along to the tracks in no time, trying to mimic his range of voices and the yodelling, haha.

His experimental style and vocals surpassed a range of emotions and made for some really interesting narratives, and I always found myself visualising the various moods in his songs. He had a flair for making songs come to life with his crazy antics and his unusual soundscapes making them an extraordinary blend of romance, comedy, drama and melancholy.

With this artwork I wanted to depicting that spectrum of emotions by attempting to replicate what he created musically so as to bring forth his multi dimensional personality with a touch of crazy. The artwork revolves around an unconventional portrait of the artist, incorporating the more stranger elements and moods from his songs on the movie "Padosan" in order to create a surreal lush landscape of vivid iconic imagery.