Singers Elita Karim and “D Rockstar” Shuvo, sang a duet for the Iflix short film, “Tea Stall,” which was released on Valentine’s Day this year. A music video for that song, titled “Ei Tumi Shei Tumi,” was released on Dhruba Music Station’s YouTube channel on Monday, and has already racked up 50,000 views.
The song will make Elita’s fans nostalgic as she channels the energy of her early singing days, when she worked on many music albums with various different stars. Her co-singer Shuvo, whose full name is Moidul Islam Khan, came to popularity with numbers such as, “Nitol Paye,” featuring Fuad Almuqtadir, “Amar Shona Bondhu,” and “Dake Shopno.” He has also won the inaugural edition of “D Rock Stars” in 2006, the first televised star search program in Bangladesh.
Elita told Dhaka Tribune Showtime: “I picked this project, as I believe collaboration works better in everything; not just in music. This song is special because of the myriads of talented folks who have collaborated on it. Trainwreck’s drummer Mark Don, who is the program producer for Radio Dhol, did the tune and music for this song. He has a heavy metal background and people might expect that he does not do melodic tunes. However, this song shows that his knowledge of music is very well rounded.
“Similarly, Rasel Mahmud, who works as Creative Director at Grey, wrote the lyrics for this song. I personally consider Rasel as one of the best creative writers in Bangladesh. If you look at the most trending taglines in the ad market currently, you will notice that he has written most of them. He writes poems, but he had never written a song. When he was asked for a song lyric, he came up with this, which further proves how good the collaboration was, how talented the entire team behind the song was,” Elita added.
With regard to the meaning of the lyrics, Elita said: “‘Ei Tumi Shei Tumi’ represents the duality of a person’s actions within a relationship. The lyrics translate to: ‘You are the one who makes me feel like the most perfect person, and there is no one else like me. Yet, you are the same person who also makes me feel selfish and brings me down.’ I feel this aptly describes how people act in a relationship, and how our loved ones make us feel.”
Elita's started her musical journey with the band Black in their first album called "Amaar Prithibi." The song was a duet with Jon called "Mithya." She next brought out an album with her band RaaGa in 2005, which was titled with the name of her band. In the same year, she did a bunch of duets with Bassbaba Sumon, of Aurthohin, who dedicated an album to Jon Denver. All the songs were translations of Denver’s songs. In 2009, she was a part of "Ontohin," a bunch of duet songs with the singer Mahadi. The lyrics were written by Asif Iqbal, and compositions were by Adit. In 2015, she released her first solo album, titled "Elita."
Regarding her future work in music, Elita said: “Singing is still my biggest passion. However, I am branching out towards creating other things. I am writing more, and will probably help produce a music project this year. However, I might not be working in music albums with seven or eight songs anymore. One reason is, music albums are expensive to make, and secondly they are not trending anymore.”
The mix and mastering of “Ei Tumi Shei Tumi” was done by Amzad Hossain and the music label for it is Dhruba Music Station.
The screenplay and direction for the short film “Tea Stall” was given by Ahsfaque Nipun, and the film was produced under the banner of Pack Up Films.
