Malaysian Indian singer on his breakout hit, the Malay-language single that made him a household name
- Multiracial appeal of Amalina catapulted Santesh, until then a hit only with Malaysia’s Tamil minority, to national fame
- ‘The song changed my life,’ says 31-year-old of track that’s earned several awards and whose music video has had 25 million hits on YouTube
The name Santesh has long been familiar to many Malaysian Indians due to his string of hit Tamil songs. However, with the release of his hit Malay single Amalina last August, Santesh became a household name among all Malaysians, the song striking a chord with its multiracial appeal.
After years of making music, Amalina marked a gigantic step forward for the 31-year-old, whose full name is Santesh Kumar Sukumaran.
The melody was written by local composer Harry Khalifah and the words by lyricist Hadi Rumnan. The duo had been searching for the right singer to bring it to life and held auditions online.
“I decided to try it out,” Santesh says “However, I changed the lyrics from the original Malay to Tamil. [Khalifah and Rumnan] were very impressed with my vocals and signed me up for the song. I eventually recorded it in both Malay and Tamil.”
BTS fans outraged by leaked details of singer Jungkook’s private life
The music video for the song is also multiracial. It tells the story of Santesh’s admiration for Amalina, a young college girl. He first spots her while eating with his friends, follows her around to win her heart and helps her repair her car when it breaks down.
Amalina and Santesh develop a friendship, but the video takes a dramatic turn when Amalina gets knocked down by a car when crossing the road while texting Santesh on her phone.
The video features talents from different races and was praised by Malaysians for its efforts to unite the country. The song went viral and currently has 25 million views on YouTube. A radio station named it the best song of 2018, while an organisation that supports local Indian artists recognised Santesh with an award for the most prominent male singer.
The Malaysia-born Tamil initially became interested in music under the influence of his father, who played in several bands. “My dad took me to all his performances from the time I turned six,” he says. “Of my 11 siblings, three were also interested in music. So dad set up a home studio where we practised singing and playing instruments. We even formed a boy band.
“I rehearsed hard and eventually was accepted to sing in my dad’s band and other bands as well. From there, I got chances to sing at weddings and other events.”
Santesh wanted to venture further into the music industry, so in 2011 he entered Vaanavil Superstar, a popular local Tamil singing competition. He made it to the grand final.
Two years later in Singapore, he won the Superstar Asia Challenge, an international singing competition, winning even more recognition.
In 2014 he signed a contract with the Psycho Unit (now PU4LFY) record label, which released his first solo album. “The album was called ‘Silap Kahwin’, a Malay title, and has nine tracks – eight are sung in Tamil and one is in Malay. The idea was to appeal to Malaysians from various races and ethnicities.”
Santesh’s career picked up pace, with invitations for stage performances and appearances as a guest artist at various events, while the album’s title track made it to Malaysia’s top 10 chart.
In 2016 he released the nine-track album “Tangkap Basah”, this time all in Tamil. However, Santesh says the album didn’t perform as well as expected, selling just more than 2,000 units.
He said that while this was a challenging time, his music eventually gained traction online with countless downloads, streams on Spotify and sales of his songs as ringtones.
‘Ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience’: Peter Jackson on his Beatles film
Santesh then started focusing on singles, instead of full albums. “First I released two songs dedicated to my mother and my wife respectively. Because the songs were personal in nature, they were not marketed much to the public.
“Then in 2017, I released a Tamil song called Katthi, a song about a man in love which explored the Indian samba rock genre.”
Katthi became a massive hit with close to 15 million views on YouTube, but the success of Amalina took him to another level entirely. Santesh later released a Tamil version of Amalina with its own video – a sequel to the first clip, showing how Santesh meets Amalina’s brother.
“The video was recognised in the Malaysia Book of Records as the fastest Tamil music video to reach 1 million views on YouTube. The song changed my life,” he says.
More recently, Santesh landed in hot water for wearing a T-shirt with an image of what looked like Malaysia’s national flag, but without the crescent which represents Islam as the country’s state religion and without the star which represents the country’s 14 states. Some observers claimed Santesh was showing disrespect to Malaysia’s official flag.
Santesh apologised for wearing the T-shirt. “It was not my intention at all to insult anyone and especially not my beloved country Malaysia,” he says.
Chinese grindcore band with pig for a lead singer
Now he is working on his next single, Maimunah, which he hopes will be as engaging and captivating as Amalina.
