‘AR Rahman is not competition’
Aveek Bhowmik
Thursday, August 28, 2008 23:59 IST
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The musical triumvirate of SHANKAR, EHSAAN and LOY talks to AVEEK
BHOWMIK about its success and why the trio feels it could have won more
National Awards
Nowadays, if you call up a Hindi movie buff
on his/her mobile phone, chances are that you will end up listening to
one of their tunes as the person’s caller tune. And you will, in all
probability, end up grooving to one of their scores again at the
discos.
Yet, though Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music is all over
the place, they are perhaps the only ones not listening to it because
once a project is over, it’s the next one that they focus on.
If
that’s the rationale behind not listening to their own music, then it
surely has worked wonders for Shankar-Eshaan-Loy. With every release
their music has just got better. And now, with Rock On’s release, a
huge buzz doing the rounds of the music industry is the soundtrack of
one of their forthcoming films – Karan Johar’s My Name Is Khan.
Though
the film is about a year and half away from release, their dummy tunes,
especially for two songs, have caught the attention of the industry. No
wonder then for the trio ‘AR Rahman is not competition’ but that is
because they ‘share a kind of mutual admiration’ with him.
We
talk to them about the joys and travails of recording songs for
different directors. How challenging was it to score for Dharma
Productions considering music is a highpoint of all their films?
Shankar
says, “It’s always a challenge to compose music for Karan. He is very
paranoid about his music. He doesn’t believe in the concept of ‘music
growing on you’. He has to hear a song and like it the next second. It
was even more of a challenge for the soundtrack of My Name Is Khan as
it’s a very different film and Karan wanted a very different score.”
Ehsaan adds, “We consider who the film-maker is, his personality, style
of storytelling and merge it all together before composing the tunes.”
Apart
from merging the various traits of a film-maker to provide great music,
the threehave also merged with each other’s culture and background to
keep their professional chemistry going. Loy says, “Our common point is
good music that’s honest, pure, fresh and has a touch of Indian-ness.”
Another
interesting aspect about the trio is that along with established
singers, they give a chance to a lot of new talent as well. People like
Anusha Mani, Shafqat Amanat Ali, Soumya Raoh, Neeraj Shridhar and now
Farhan Akhtar, have all lent their voices to the tunes of the trio.
They are now also looking at other avenues to pick up and promote new
talent. For example, Shankar is all set to appear as a mentor in a
reality TV show.
When asked what he would do to boost the
morale of candidates who don’t make it to the top, he says, “Most of
the time people who don’t win get all the work. And as music composers,
we are constantly on the lookout for new talent. A contestant may be
out in the first round, but we may call him/her for a recording for the
unique character of his/her voice.”
Right now, it’s the time
for them to rock on. And their success can be also be gauged from the
numerous awards that they’ve won, including the National Award for Kal
Ho Naa Ho. So was that the highest point of their career? “I would
definitely rate it as the highest point. It felt really good when
people from all walks of life used to come up to us and congratulate
us,” says Ehsaan.
However, Shankar and Ehsaan feel that they
could have won another National Award for Bunty Aur Babli. “It was
special. Kajra re was a rage and we won all the popular awards that
year. Unfortunately, that year we didn’t have the National Awards.
Maybe we could have won that as well,” they end.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1186471&pageid=0
