Oscar Award winning ‘Jai Ho’ song from Slumdog Millionaire was actually composed for Salman Khan’s film Yuvvraaj, directed by Subhash Ghai.
Film making is a risky business, and besides the fact that a lot of money is at stake, its possible for even the most accomplished filmmakers to make a wrong judgement (occasionally).
And that’s what happened in the case of the Oscar award winning song ‘Jai Ho’.
‘Jai Ho’ was originally composed by AR Rahman (and penned by Gulzar) for Subhash Ghai’s Yuvraaj (starring Salman Khan, Anil Kapoor & Zayed Khan). But Subhash Ghai was not impressed with the song and felt it was too soft for the sequence where he wanted the song, and so he rejected the song.
However, Rahman & Gulzar were convinced about the potential of the song and decided to keep the song for some other film. They made Danny Boyle hear the song and he instantly liked the song.
A.R.Rahman had a discussion with Subhash Ghai and he was happy to let Boyle use that song for his movie Slum Dog Millionaire.
The rest, as you all know, is history.
So does Subhash Ghai regret rejecting the song ‘Jai Ho’ for his movie Yuvvraaj?
Not really! Because, like most in the industry (including Aditya Chopra of YashRaj films), even Subash Ghai believes that every song has it’s own destiny.
Well, while things like arrangement, orchestration, and even marketing of a song contributes to the success of a song, what many didn’t fathom that just a change of hands would make such a huge impact to the prospects of a song.
Checkout the song ‘Jai Ho’ from the movie Slumdog Millionaire (comes towards the end, during the credits.)
Singers of Jai Ho
Although everybody thinks that Sukhwinder Singh was the only singer of the song, there were three more singers who contributed to the ‘Jai Ho’ song – Vijay Prakash, Tanvi Shah and Mahalaxmi Iyer.
Singer Vijay Prakash is all praise for Rahman. “He always does his best for an artist. He is the first composer in India who started the practice of giving credit to all backup vocalists and everyone else involved in making a song. He is someone who will always try and want his artists to get maximum exposure.”
