Narivetta (soundtrack)

Narivetta is the soundtrack album composed by Jakes Bejoy to the 2025 Malayalam-language political action thriller film of the same name directed by Anuraj Manohar starring Tovino Thomas, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Cheran, Priyamvada Krishnan and Arya Salim. The soundtrack featured 12 songs, featuring lyrics written by Kaithapram Damodaran Namboothiri, Anwar Ali, B. K. Harinarayanan, Vedan, Athul Narukara, Balan Manthan, Prasad K. Much of the music featured adaptations of traditional folk songs from Wayanad Pulaya community.

The album was preceded by three singles—"Minnalvala", "Aadu Ponmayile" and "Vaada Veda"—and the album released on 23 May 2025, the same day as the film, under the Sony Music India label. The song "Minnalvala" was a chartbuster upon its release.

Jakes Bejoy composed the film score and soundtrack to Narivetta having previously worked with Manohar on his debut film Ishq (2019). Bejoy and his music team went to Wayanad in search of authentic folk songs from that locality.^[1] He collaborated with Athul Narukara, who had previously written "Kalakkatha" from Ayyappanum Koshiyum (2020), throughout the research. In a Manorama Online interview, Narukara considered the process of finding the song as difficult as they had to find songs from different backgrounds and places and go down to understand the identity of that song.^[2]

Throughout their research in Wayanad, he and Bejoy listened to the performances of the song "Aadu Ponmayile" live and got help from other singing groups Unarvu and Padayani. A local community member from Wayanad, explained on how the genre of the songs dying slowly, as the folk songs were mostly performed by locals who were hunting, and with the hunting ban, the use of this song decreased. On writing the song "Aadu Ponmayile", he denoted that the first four lines belong to the Wayanad Pulaya community who arranged the tune and was also credited for the song. The first part of the song "Ae Kaade Kaade" were written by B. K. Harinarayanan while Narukara wrote the later part of the lyrics, owing to his experience in writing folk songs.^[2]

The song "Minnalvala" was written by Kaithapram Damodaran Namboothiri, after a brief hiatus.^[3] Kaithapram recalled that the team approached him to write the song as they needed poetic lyrics, and felt impressed with the composition. He noted that the context of "Minnalvala" was based on poet Kalidasa's image from his Sanskrit poem Raghuvaṃśa. It denoted that after Ravana abducts Sita, the latter helplessly threw her hands out and screamed after which the lightning bolts in the sky decorated her hands with bangles.^[4] Manohar noted that the song was earlier written as a Christian devotional song, before a part of the lyrics symbolized the romantic flavor. The song was written within one-and-an-half hour.^[5] The other songs were written by Vedan, Anwar Ali, and folk artists from Wayanad.^[1]

The album was preceded with the first single "Minnalvala" which released on 16 April 2025.^[6][7] It was followed by the second song "Aadu Ponmayile" on 14 May and "Vaada Veda" on 20 May.^[8][9] The soundtrack was released under the Sony Music India label on 23 May, the same day as the film's release.^[10]

Shilpa Nair Anand of The Hindu wrote "Jakes Bejoy's music deserves praise [...] The songs in the background underscore what owning a piece of land means to a tribal person whose everything is the forest. A line from one of the songs, 'they drift through their dreams with no land of their own', is haunting."^[11] Vignesh Madhu of The New Indian Express wrote "Jakes Bejoy's stirring score also plays its part in underlining the tragedy."^[12] Latha Srinivasan of Hindustan Times wrote "Jakes Bejoy's music added to the movie's emotional quotient, striking a chord in tempo with the heavy visuals."^[13]

Arjun Menon of Rediff.com wrote "Jakes Bejoy continues his use of culturally appropriate instrumentation and organic sounding score that remains true to the wild ways of the film's latter half. The cultural milieu and emotional scape of the film is earmarked by his unrelentingly rooted score that synchronizes with the docufiction approach of the filmmaking."^[14] Sruthi Ganapathy Raman of The Hollywood Reporter India wrote "Jakes Bejoy does a brilliant job, threading together the two opposite emotions in an impactful score."^[15]

The song "Minnalvala" became viral upon its release through social media platforms.^[16] It further topped the Spotify charts on the week of Kaithapram's 75th birthday (4 August).^[17]

Credits adapted from Sony Music South:^[18]