Kochi Scene Spotlight - Leonardo

“ I don’t sit down to write a song”

There is something I look forward to every year for no particular reason - Bob Dylan’s birthday on May 24th. I don’t do much; I simply think of his music and feel honoured to live in the same day and age as the songwriter. Memories of Shillong come to mind. The entire city seems to be celebrating his birthday. 

I first heard of Leo when I watched his performance at a songwriting contest held by Global Music Institute in early 2024. He played the guitar and harmonica, sang his song and his attire reminded me of Dylan’s. Fast-forward to May June 2025, and I’m happy to share that I’ll be joining him on-stage for a couple of songs for a duo-set at The Piano Man Jazz Club, in Delhi next month. 

His debut album, LEONARDO was released in 2022 and has a goldmine of a songwriting and performance repertoire. He was selected as a finalist for the Mahindra Blues Band Hunt by and has performed for Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

I set out to interview him and understand more about his songwriting process. Speaking with him made me feel as if I finally found a friend who shared similar interests when it came to folk music and the ethereal process of songwriting. And his music definitely makes you feel something. He believes that there’s a dearth of songwriters in the country. While we have world-class instrumentalists, we lack musicians that have a story to weave and narrate with just a guitar and vocals. Songwriting for him, is a lonely act that requires solitude, without which it gets difficult to write songs. He appreciates good songcraft. Here’s how our interesting conversation unfolded:

1. On Rosalie

I’m going down South

Away from this freezing cold

To the coconut trees

And the warm winds of may

I’ll get there in time

To watch the violent sea fold

Or catch the apostle’s relics

On full display

I thought of Fort Kochi and the beach. The Netflix series Cobalt Blue came to mind. 

Leo wasn’t thinking of Kerala though. The song came to him. As uncanny as it sounds, he mentioned that he hardly ever sits down to write the song and doesn’t really know where the songs come from. For Rosalie, he mentioned communist bastions that have been preserved in amber and have not come crumbling down with time such as the atmosphere in Cuba and Kerala. They comprise the image of the song. It’s about a time and place preserved in amber where the place, cars and the ways in which people think and move are old. Fort Kochi would hold up to the imagery of the song, he adds. It feels like it could be something out of a book by Gabriel García Márquez. 

He mentioned something similar to what Townes Van Zandt had to say about songwriting:

He liked to say the songs were already out there, fully-formed, somewhere in the ether. The trick was to be in the right place at the right time, so he could reach out and grab one when it floated by. - Steve Brooks, Songwriting as a Spiritual Path

In a world where many artists would go to any lengths to cater to Instagram’s algorithm and focus on songwriting in terms of its commercial success, Leo’s music stands out. It tells a story. It comes from within. 

2. On Influences

Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Guy Clark, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Joan Baez, Hank Williams, Madison Cunningham, Appalachian folk music, Charlie Patton and Hozier amongst others. He says it’s like:

This hand reaches out from the speaker, grabs you by the heart, and you feel like the air is being taken out of you and the ground shifting… you know..you can feel the tectonic plates moving….

That’s what folk music is. There’s so much of it, out there for years. It’s like an inexhaustible resource. Folk music is not old. It’s just as new as it was when it was written. It’s almost like those songs were always there, echoing in some primal way throughout the earth and somebody just managed to write it in that time and place, like any good song. It has that sense of permanence. 

3. His Process

I don’t sit down to write a song. I don’t decide that I’m going to write a song now..I don’t write it like that. I’m sure people do that as well and it works..

Usually, I’m working on a song at any given time. Right now, I could tell you about 4 songs that I’m working on, and are not written anywhere, but are just playing in my head. Sometimes the physical writing of it…gives it an arc, or a thread from start to end…which you’ve not planned on. I use a typewriter, so the rhythm of typing it out..the way it moves and shakes…gives it a certain rhythm.. Sometimes, if the song has been in my mind for a long time and I’m just easing it out, it becomes more calm… It completely depends. 

About the ideas; sometimes words just come and you’re just kind of changing them here and there and the next thing you know, you have something that works and you just build on it. I’ve never really thought about it, because the second the mind comes into the picture, and the second you start thinking about what and how you’re writing it, you’re in trouble..and like the song just vanishes. All the songs in my album were written extremely quickly. Gates of Jerusalem and Rosalie were written in under 10 minutes. It’s not like I had a plan to write them. Probably the chorus line or something just came to me and as I was writing it, it came through. It has a lot to do with the environment. That same song could have been another song on a different day. 

………………………….

On the personal front, I have been spending the last few days in Assam. While it is fun to be residing in the middle of nowhere, amongst 15 cats with nothing much to do, this conversation with Leo served as an energy booster. As I was writing this piece, I did a quick research on his references and found myself back to where I started when I first discovered Folk music - intrigued and inspired. I am now reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography - Chronicles, Volume 1, and would like to conclude with lines written by the bard himself;

“It’s not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It’s not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life…You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular”.