Lucknow Central offers foot-tapping rhythms and melody 

Arjunna Harjaie’s music for Farhan Akhtar’s next film uses sounds of trash cans and buckets
A still from the Kaavaan Kaavaan song
A still from the Kaavaan Kaavaan song

Although Lucknow Central releases only in mid-September, the first song of the film — Kaavaan Kaavaan with the ensemble cast led by Farhan Akhtar has been trending on music charts. The reprised version of the original Kawa Kawa song by Sukhwinder Singh and Mychael Danna from the film Monsoon Wedding (2001) is gaining popularity in its new avatar. 
The song has been recomposed byArjunna Harjaie, a protege of singer Suresh Wadkar. Arjunna, who is well-known for his music composition for Nikkhil Advani’s tele-series, POW — Bandhi Yuddh Ke, says, “I have  recomposed the track with new elements. The entire arrangement is different.” Lucknow Central could turn out to be Arjunna’s big ticket to success in Bollywood. “The movie took time to happen. In fact, I thought it wouldn’t work out, until last year,” he says, adding, “Lyricist Kumar has been very supportive of my work. He introduced me to Nikkhil to work on some Sufi songs for his short film Guddu Engiineer. 
I composed one song and the next day, I was asked to compose the background score for the film,” he reveals. From there on, Arjunna didn’t look back. He went onto compose the background track for Nikkhil’s ambitious POW project which won the gold award in the best original score category and a bronze award for the track Raahiya Ve at the ABBY Awards 2017.
New waves
With such a precedent, Arjunna was the obvious first choice to compose three songs for Lucknow Central — which explores an unusual storyline about prisoners who form a band to win a competition, but under the pretense, actually are planning an escape. “Composing music for this film came with its set of challenges. The entire sound scape had to represent a jail scenario and prison sounds. Nikkhil had asked me to avoid instruments because you don’t find any instruments in jail. So, I decided to work with mouth percussion, foot tapping, clapping, sounds of trash cans and buckets,” admits Arjunna. 
For the other song Teen Kabutar, Arjunna has collaborated with Taufiq Qureshi, the ace percussionist and rapper Raftaar, while Mohit Chauhan and Divya Kumar have lent their voices. “In this film, Farhan (Akhtar) has not sung any songs. Divya voices most of his songs. Farhan was keen on using Divya as he had already heard him sing,” says Arjunna. But for the third song that is yet to be released, Arijit Singh has lent his voice. “It had to be Arijit and nobody else,” says the music composer, who is soaking in the attention he has received since Kaavaan Kaavaan’s release.

ayeshatabassum@newindianexpress.com
@aishatax

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