Team Radio City Freedom

Leslee Lewis is a name familiar to anyone who has followed music in the 90s and 2000s. From being part of iconic jingles like "Doodh doodh doodh doodh" or "Mango Frooti fresh and juicy" to indipop hits like Sunita Rao's "Pari Hoon Main" or KK's "Pal", Leslee has been creating magic with his music for over 3 decades. One of his most challenging project was producing the hugely popular show Coke Studio's first season in India. In an exclusive interview with Radio City Freedom, Leslee spoke about how Coke Studio happened

"It's a funny story. I used to hang out with the business community in Pune, at the time when Coke Studio in Pakistan released. Everybody was talking about it. One of my friend foolishly went around saying that I did the music for Coke Studio in Pakistan. It wasn't true at all. But strangely when Coke Studio came to India they approached me to produce it and I told my friend, you said it back then and it manifested."

On being asked about the brief he received for the first season of Coke Studio in India and how he interpreted it, Leslee said

"I received a fantastic brief from Red Chillies and MTV. They said Sir you know music, we leave it to you. That gave me the option to open out and explore. As much as I like Coke Studio Pakistan they are restricted. They have 8 songs in a season and we had 51. There's music from all oarts of the country that needed representation on Coke Studio India. We are culturally very diverse. To have all of those sound into one season was definitely a challenge. On top of that we had fantastic Bollywood singers like Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan along with incredibly talented folk artists like Khogen Gogoi, thrown into that mix were some really up and coming artists like HArshdeep Kaur and Akriti Kakar. We had to create that competitive edge on the set to get the best out of them, it's not a recording studio, it is live. "

Check out the full interview