Art & Entertainment

The Friday Night All-Stars Band

B’wood’s new medley with multiple composers

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The Friday Night All-Stars Band
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I Am
Amit Trivedi
Vivek Philip
Rajeev Bhalla
Mithoon

Rajneeti
Aadesh Srivatsva
Shantanu Moitra
Pritam
Wayne Sharpe

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Sikandar
Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Sandesh Shandilya
Justin-Uday

Striker
Swanand Kirkire
Vishal Bhardwaj
Blaaze
Amit Trivedi
Shailendra Barve
Yuvan Shankar Raja.

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Wake Up Sid
Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Amit Trivedi

Firaq
Rajat Dholakia
Piyush Kanojia

Tere Bin Laden
Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Abhijit Vaghani
Dhruv Dhalla
Ali Zafar

W
I Am
Megha, Afa, Abhimanyu
Omar
Dev D
Megha
Maula mere
Anwar
Afia
Omar
Abhimanyu

Onir’s attempt is part of a trend that has been gaining ground in Bollywood. A number of filmmakers are using multiple music directors in a film, rather than giving the responsibility of the entire film to one. The trend is not just confined to providing platforms to newer, younger music composers; even well-established names have been participating in the experimentation. Abhishek Sharma’s satire, Tere Bin Laden, which releases next week, has Shankar Ehsaan Loy (SEL), Abhijit Vaghani, Dhruv Dhalla and Ali Zafar. Prakash Jha’s recent mega success Raajneeti has a song apiece from Aadesh Srivastava, Shantanu Moitra, Pritam and Wayne Sharpe. Similarly Chandan Arora’s Striker brought together as many as six composers—Swanand Kirkire, Vishal Bhardwaj, Blaaze, Amit Trivedi, Shailendra Barve and Yuvan Shankar Raja.

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One of the earliest and oft-quoted examples of the use of multiple music directors in films was AVM Production’s 1953 Kishore Kumar-Vyjanthimala starrer Ladki, which had two music composers—Dhaniram and R. Sudarshan. In the ’90s, Gulshan Kumar of T-Series too tried this experiment. However, for him it was a matter of sheer convenience rather than serious contemplation. “He had a ready bank of songs from several composers and pulled out random compositions from it for any one film,” explains Bollywood music expert Pavan Jha. In 2001, Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (K3G) got noticed for providing a platform to three composers—Sandesh Shandilya, Aadesh Srivastava and Jatin-Lalit and Subhash Ghai hit the headlines for getting two big names—A.R. Rahman and Ismail Darbar—together for his film Kisna (2005).

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However, the practice didn’t catch on like wildfire, as it has now. Ask the composers and they say it has largely to do with what producers and directors want. “It’s a filmmaker’s personal choice,” says Vishal Dadlani of the duo Vishal-Shekhar. “It shows the range of options available to filmmakers, like how previously you would go to one grocery shop, now you visit the entire mall,” says singer-composer Kailash Kher. No wonder the credit for the success of such scores is also going to the directors. “I Am’s score flows well because Onir was clear on the genre and style in his brief,” says composer Vivek Philip.

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It’s hard to find a common ground or reason for the growing practice. “It’s difficult to generalise,” admits Chandan Arora, director of Striker. His film’s music score expresses a gamut of emotions—hope, aspirations, love, sadness. “I wanted dynamically different sounds to represent the different stages in my protagonist’s life,” he says, and so he went to different music directors for different situations, scenes and moods.  “They made each of the moments magical,” he says in retrospect.

Apart from creative concerns, the reasons could also be financial. Indeed, in the case of I Am, it was a mix of the two. The film’s cast and crew worked at a nominal price or no fee at all. “So I just reached out to the composers, too, to voluntarily contribute one song each instead of asking one of them to compose the whole score,” says Onir. 

Even when music is not integral to a film, one finds multiple composers being used, and it seems largely to do with the music album becoming a promo for a film rather than complementing its spirit. “The tracks are put together to somehow bring an album into the market and build buzz around the film,” says singer-lyricist-composer Swanand Kirkire. Raajneeti is a prime example of a film in which the songs, though melodious, are redundant to the film’s narrative. Pavan Jha finds the practice indicative of a larger change in filmmaking. “You order and get a song irrespective of whether it has any connect with the film or not,” he says.

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Swanand doesn’t see anything wrong with the trend as long as it results in  good melodies. “Mazaa aata hai,” he smiles. Kailash Kher too finds it “cool” and “fun” to work with others. He and sel gave the music for Chandni Chowk to China and Shankar even sang one of Kailash’s compositions for the film.

However, not everyone is comfortable with the idea. “People working with us have confidence in our ability and versatility to ask us to do all their songs,” says Vishal. Last December the Cine Music Association had called for steps to stop the practice. Pritam was then quoted as saying: “I’ve been both the aggrieved and aggrieving party. I’ve found composers being brought into my album without my consent. At the same time, I’ve also been unconsciously composing extra songs for movies without knowing I’m impinging on a colleague’s territory.”

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Clearly, it could lead to a sense of competition and one-upmanship amongst collaborating composers. “You must have faith and confidence in your own creation,” says Aadesh Srivastava whose song, ‘Mora piya’, in Raajneeti has turned out to be the biggest hit in the four-track album. Swanand puts it matter-of-factly, “Eventually out of five only one song will click big time.” Each composer will, of course, wish it is his.

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