Best known for his song Phoonk Phoonk from the movie Ginny Weds Sunny, Gaurav Chatterji was a strategic planner before he decided to pursue his dream of music. Even as a child, Gaurav hoped to compose music albums for Bollywood movies. It was in 2016 that he started creating music for advertisements and then later for short films. The composer has now scored for Vidya Balan’s Jalsa and has been receiving rave reviews for his background score. “I knew the director Suresh Triveni even before the project came to me. We worked together for several short films. I sent him a piece of music that I created and he liked it. When he narrated Jalsa’s script to me, I forwarded a few more compositions that might work for the thriller. That’s how I got to score for the movie,” Gaurav shares.
Speaking about working on Jalsa’s score, the musician also added that the script allowed him to push his boundaries. He also said that he jumped onto the project as soon as he read the script as the narrative had space for strong music composition. “Jalsa is one of those movies, whose music is not just a background score. It required personality and that’s what attracted me to it in the first place,” he reveals.
Calling the movie an emotional thriller, Gaurav tells us that the music was composed in two different ways. The emotional and melancholic tracks were mostly inspired by Indian classical music. He shares, “I used an Uod, a Persian fretless stringed instrument to create an Indian raag, which became an important aspect of Maya’s (Vidya Balan) role. Then there was the suspense aspect of the film, for which I worked after the movie was shot. I scored looking at the visuals and used electronic elements to bring in the thrill.”
Before signing off, Gaurav also tells us that his future projects include Tiku Weds Sheru.
— bsuchitra@newindianexpress.com