Home   Forum   Wiki   Notes   Register   FAQ   Sitemap   About Us   Contact Us  

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy can be brought to TFM

Topic started by Jay (@ 203.124.234.166) on Tue Jan 28 01:28:13 EST 2003.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Remember the Music Director trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, the music directors of Kamal Hassan's Alavandhaan. They seem to be missing in the Tamil scene for the last 2 years and they are doing really good in the Hindi field. They have given solid musical hits in Hindi such as; Mission Kashmir, Dil Chahtha Hai. I think they can be brought to the Tamil films again. I feel they are definitely better than Deva and a few others. I think they are the best as far as Hindi Film Music goes after A R Rahman.

I would like healthy comments who listen to Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and have a fair knowledge of Hindi Film Industry.

---

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Karthik S (@ 164.164.82.29) on: Thu Mar 4 22:11:28 EST 2004
  
  Part 3
  
  Tell me, do accusations of being repetitive bother you?
  
  Loy : No way. I think the problem is that we are not repetitive. People just want to point a finger at us. When Dil Chahta Hai came in, it was modern and one-of-its-kind. Mission Kashmir had a strong Kashmiri influence, Armaan was mature, Kuch Naa Kaho was popular, Rudraksh is hardcore techno. Lakshya is totally different from Dil Chahta Hai. We just want to better our music, and we have.
  
  Yes, there are some elements that are us and identified as Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, which is good. It’s very important to have an identity. But the audience is entitled to their point of view. All we can do is present our case; if the audience finds us guilty, we are guilty. But watch out, there are a lot more surprises we have in store.
  
  Ehsaan : Musically speaking, we are well versed in every form, from Indian classical to Western classical to world music, or even Chinese. So our influences are myriad. Technically speaking, we produce, compose, arrange and do everything on our own. We don’t use outside arrangers so that gives each song an inherent originality. Loy and I are complete technology junkies and we keep buying new software. Shankar has bought himself a Macintosh computer so he will start programming now!
  
  Having a singer like Shankar must make life easier.
  
  Ehsaan : It does, in many ways. With singers, he is able to explain the finer nuances. With film-makers, he can present the song perfectly. If Loy and I sang, our songs would definitely get rejected!
  
  Do other singers feel intimidated by Shankar?
  
  Ehsaan : Yes, they definitely do—not only is he a singer but an excellent one and he has some strong opinions too. He tells the singer what the modulation should be, where the harkat should be, what the harkat should be. But he does it so well that the singer would want to sing it that way. Also, we’re open to improvisation and keep recording till we get the desired result.
  
  Shankar : Yes, they were wary initially. But once they saw our informal working style, they got comfortable. We try out 100 variations and recording just happens while we’re having a blast. Besides, the singers respect my capabilities. I have earned that respect over time.
  
  
• From: Karthik S (@ 164.164.82.29) on: Thu Mar 4 22:11:57 EST 2004
  
  Part 4
  
  Shankar, A R Rahman and you are both composers, both in the fray together, and yet you also sing for him. It’s a refreshing change from all the competitiveness.
  
  Shankar : Rahman and I go back a long, long way. He helped me get my foot into the industry door. He’s a gem of a person. Success hasn’t changed him one bit. Recently, on one of our concerts together, he announced to a crowd of 40,000 people, “This is the guy who has composed the biggest blockbuster of 2003, Kal Ho Naa Ho.” I was touched!
  
  Loy : That says a lot about Rahman, the man. The bottomline is all about the ego—put that away and everything falls into perspective.
  
  Ehsaan : I think it’s very healthy. It’s the same with us. All of us work individually, too. Shankar has his concerts. Right now, Loy and I are composing a jingle for an advertising film. And why only Rahman, Shankar can sing for anyone in Bollywood! It is they who choose not to call him for whatever reason. I would go and play a guitar for A R Rahman if he asked me to. Yes, we are music directors but we are basically musicians, and that is the common denominator. We will play jazz in a restaurant today, compose a jingle tomorrow, and a movie song the day after. These are the various facets of being musicians, which enrich us all the time.
  
  So you have musical life beyond films, and maintain it too.
  
  Ehsaan : I am still confused about what the word filmi really means. Others have been living and breathing films for years. For us, filmi is what we are doing now. I think it’s a flexible term.
  
  Loy : Honestly, I don’t think we will ever fit in 100 per cent because we are not really filmi filmi people, so to speak. Our reference points are all different since we come from the advertising world. We cannot forget our roots. The beauty is that we bring these values and work with people who are on a similar wavelength. They’ve got used to our chaotic way of working. We fight, argue and compose. The title song of Kal Ho Naa Ho happened in a breeze. I scored the opening line Har ghadi badal rahi hai roop zindagi, then Ehsaan tuned the cross line Har pal yahan jee bhar jeeyo and then Shankar gave the final touch with Kal ho naa ho, all in 15 minutes!
  
  Shankar : Yeah, we can’t function without the chaos. As long as there’s Ehsaan’s paranoia, Loy’s chilled-out attitude and me trying to do 100 things at the same time, we know we are on safe ground. That’s the way it will always be.
  
  
• From: Mirage (@ 128.107.253.41) on: Thu Mar 4 23:43:17 EST 2004
  
  Partners in Chime!
  
  Thats a cool one :-)
  
  
• From: ram (@ 64.102.92.107) on: Fri Mar 5 09:46:20 EST 2004
  
  
  Yeah... was just about to post a link to the article. Nice read...
  Ehsaanji, you all sounds so down to earth. I hope I can meet you all someday !
  For any interested:
  http://filmfaremagazine.indiatimes.com/articleshow/articleshow/articleshow/articleshow/532173.cms?&right=1&fright=1&botlink=1
  
  
• From: JK. (@ 66.28.42.140) on: Fri Mar 5 10:20:08 EST 2004
  
  Ehsaan,
  Aren't there two ways to go in the industry if you are a music director?
  one way is to do music for movies and the other do pop albums and Ads (either do your own album or compose songs for other artists. Leslie Lewis, Biddu for example.)
  How come you and most musicians take the film route? I guess at one point in your career you would've had to decide?
  Isnt movies a more tiring and stressful way to go?
  
  
• From: Ehsaan (@ 202.68.147.159) on: Sun Mar 7 02:16:12 EST 2004
  
  hi jk films just happened it was not part of our plan , we do jingles etc still
  
  
• From: Jay (@ 208.48.228.224) on: Sun Mar 7 15:43:26 EST 2004
  
  Ehsaan,
  Thanks for the reply! I know you guys just happened to get Dus and caught on from there.
  
  My question was a generic one in regards to the industry also...so why do most music directors get into movies? Do you find it more stressful to work in the movie scene?
  
  
• From: Venki (@ 67.173.211.233) on: Mon Mar 8 00:36:57 EST 2004
  
  Thosught I would post an article on an Indian film festival in LA, where SEL are praised sky high.
  
  UCLA Film and Television Archive
  &
  Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles
  present
  Bombay Melody - by David Chute
  
  How much fun can a university film series afford to be? Bombay Melody is designed to test the limits. It highlights a feature unique to Indian popular cinema: the ubiquitous use of lip-synched “playback” songs as a vehicle of storytelling. All of the films we’ve selected are traditional Bollywood music dramas—“melodramas” in the original sense of the term. They are engaging, lively, tuneful movies, which can be offered with confidence to an audience of firangi (“foreigners”, without excuses and without footnotes.
  The term “Bollywood” was created by smooshing together the words “Bombay” and “Hollywood.” It is the almost universal slang term for the commercial movie industry of India, which is closely associated with (though by no means confined to) the teeming Northern coastal city now known officially as Mumbai. The word is sometimes uttered with a sneer, but not by us: we brandish it as a badge of honor, with all of its vexed implications of glitz, gossip and star power.
  Changes in the basic Indian film song sound may occur with glacial slowness, but they do occur. One of the films being screened here, the superhit KAL HO NAA HO (Tomorrow May Not Be), has a beautiful, buoyant song-score by the trio of young composers known as Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. In just a couple of years, since their breakthrough work on DIL CHAHTA HAI (The Heart Desires, 2002), S-E-L have joined A.R. Rahman and Ismail Darbar (DEVDAS) at the leading edge of a new generation of filmi sangeet (“film song” composers.
  The film and pop music industries in India have always been intricately inter-connected, and S-E-L’s infectious title tune for KHNH perched comfortably at the top of the Indian pop charts for several months. The trio has perhaps the widest musical range of any of the top Bollywood composers. They have introduced a variety of new “world music”-flavored sounds to the repertoire, but they can also turn out infectious dance hits, and they can revert convincingly to an older Hindu-devotional style, without a trace of retro self-consciousness.
  Tamil cinema has for many years turned out some of the strongest Indian film music. The recent career of A.R. Rahman, who composed the rapturous tunes for Mani Rathnam’s ALAIPAYUTHEY, is a convincing indication of the potential global reach of this music at its best. In addition to the songs for Ashutosh Gowariker’s Oscar-nominated LAGAAN (2001), Rahman’s recent projects have included the Broadway-bound Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Bombay Dreams, the songs for a London stage adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, and the score for a Chinese period swordplay epic, He Ping’s WARRIORS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
  It may seem odd that a series dubbed Bombay Melody includes a Tamil-language production made in Chennai (formerly Madras). But in truth the so-called Bollywood idiom is a pan-Indian narrative style, and it is often employed with even more verve and sophistication in India’s other regional languages than it is in Mumbai’s Hindi-Urdu.[no ¶?]There are always been a few people within the Indian industry who profess to hate the tyranny of the film song. The naysayers seem to regard the music in Indian movies as an embarrassment, a vestige of the stagy past that must be jettisoned if the industry is ever to compete for legitimacy with the products of the tone-deaf West. We contend, on the contrary, that music as infectious as, say, A.R. Rahman’s is a perfect vehicle for carrying the Bollywood message to the far corners of the globe.
  
  Curated by David Chute
  
  Special thanks to: Lisa Tsering—IndiaWest; Deepesh Salgia—Sterling Investments; Gitesh Pandya—BoxOfficeGuru.com; Shyam Shroff—Shringar Group; Sam Baskar—Tamil Cinema World; Lavina Ludhani—Tips Music Films; Regina Schlagnitweit—The Austrian Film Museum.
  
  
• From: Venki (@ 67.173.211.233) on: Mon Mar 8 00:38:06 EST 2004
  
  Part 2:
  
  SUN 4/18 2:15 pm
  MUGHAL-E-AZAM
  (The Great Mughal)
  (1960) Directed by K. Asif
  One of the most celebrated classics of the black-and-white “Golden Age” of Bollywood cinema, K. Asif’s nine-year labor of love MUGHAL-E-AZAM is a lavishly mounted and rapturously romantic fable, set in the 16th-century imperial court of the Muslim emperor Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor), a domineering ruler who objects strenuously when his only son, the dashing war hero Prince Salim (Dilip Kumar), falls in love with the slave girl Anarkali (Madhubala). The movie is celebrated for its visual scale and splendor, for the powerhouse performances of Kapoor and Kumar (who go head to head in several memorable scenes) and for the personal-best song score composed by Naushad (MOTHER INDIA), one of the most revered music directors in the history of Bombay cinema.
  Producer: K. Asif. Screenwriters: K. Asif, Aman. Dialogue: K. Asif, Kamal Amrohi, Wajahat Mirza, Ehsan Rizvi. Cinematographer: R.D. Mathur. Music Director: Naushad. Lyrics: Shakeel Badayuni. With: Dilip Kumar, Madhubala, Prithviraj Kapoor, Durga Khote, Johnny Walker. 35mm, in Urdu with English subtitles, 173 min.
  
  MUGHAL-E-AZAM screens on the closing day of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood. Ticket prices for this screening are $11 general, and $9 for students, seniors and ArcLight members. Tickets can be purchased beginning March 23 at the ArcLight box office or online at . Please see the accompanying box for more information on IFFLA.
  
  
  WED 4/21 7:30 pm
  ALAIPAYUTHEY
  (Waves)
  (2000) Directed by Mani Rathnam
  Writer-director Mani Rathnam is, among other things, contemporary Indian cinema’s supreme visual stylist. It could be argued that his genius for the uniquely specialized Indian film craft of “song picturization” can be better appreciated here than in the more famous films of his so-called “terror trilogy,” ROJA, BOMBAY and DIL SE. This modestly scaled, location-shot story is a deliberately low-key tale of a marriage in crisis that harks back to one of Rathnam’s earliest breakout hits, MOUNA RAGAM (Silent Symphony, 1987), which was about the mutual adjustments required of a well-meaning husband and wife in an arranged marriage. Here it’s an immensely likable and un-heroic young couple (Madhavan and Shalini) who conceal their impulsive marriage from their families; now the rift that develops when the secret is revealed threatens to undermine their relationship. The songs are some of composer A.R. Rahman’s most seductive, and Rathnam’s stagings are simply breathtaking: ebullient, lyrical and subtly erotic. (The film was re-made in Hindi in 2002 under the title SAATHIYA.)
  Producer: G. Srinivasan. Screenwriter: M. Rathnam. Dialogue: M. Rathnam, R. Selvaraj. Cinematographer: P.C. Sriram. Music Director: A.R. Rahman. Lyrics: Vairamuthu. Choreographer: Farah Khan. With: Madhavan, Shalini, Jayasudha, Aravind Swamy. 35mm, in Tamil with English subtitles, 156 min.
  
  
  FRI 4/23 7:30 pm
  KAL HO NAA HO
  (Tomorrow May Not Be)
  (2003) Directed by Nikhil Advani
  Naina (Preity Zinta) is a congenital grump, an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) whose troubled family set-up in suburban New Jersey includes a long-suffering widowed mother (Jaya Bachchan) and a venomously embittered paternal grandmother (Zohra Sehgal). Naina’s mood is unexpectedly lightened by the appearance from abroad of Aman (Shah Rukh Khan), who has made a personal crusade of cajoling gloomy people into savoring life’s all-too transitory pleasures. Complications arise when Naina begins to fall for Aman just as her best friend Rohit (Saif Ali Khan) is beginning to harbor some inconvenient tender feelings of his own. The expertise of writer-producer Karan Johar (KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI, KABHIE KUSHI KABHIE GHAM) in crafting entertainments in this glossy “Hindu Family Values” format is second to none, and Johar’s script, coupled with charmingly explosive lead performances by three of the most personable stars in Hindi cinema, made KHNH one of the biggest Hindi-language hits of 2003, especially in the NRI communities in Europe and North America.
  Producers: Yash Johar, Karan Johar. Screenwriter: K. Johar. Dialogue: Niranjan Iyengar. Cinematographer: Anil Mehta. Music Directors: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Lyrics: Javed Akhtar. Choreographer: Farah Khan. With: Jaya Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Preity Zinta. 35mm, in Hindi, Punjabi, Gujurati, and English with English subtitles, 186 min.
  
  

---

List all pages of this thread

Post comments