On the door of music producer and singer Clinton Cerejo’s studio, there is a freshly printed page that says, “Please come in. I am already disturbed.”
Inside, the musician is busy on his Mac, working on an anthem for a polo sport tournament to be held in Jaipur. In the tiny studio, you can spot a Djembe (drum) in a corner, two retro-looking guitar amplifiers kept neatly on a table, a keyboard under the Mac to put out the scratch composition, and an assortment of guitars at the back. And in the backdrop of all this lies the Juhu Church. It’s a fitting milieu for the Mumbai musician who grew up in a Catholic family on a healthy diet of Western music, and now works in Bollywood.
The journey
Cerejo, in his 40s, is only three films old as a Bollywood music composer, with his recent efforts being Jugni , Te3n and Kahaani 2 . But his body of work, since the late 90s — when he started working in the music industry — encompasses everything one can possibly do in the entire process of making music. He has arranged vocal harmonies, has sung (from being a backing vocalist to solo lead), then graduated to becoming a prolific music producer before, finally, working on his own compositions.
“It was a gradual growth,” says Cerejo. “It largely came from the fact that once I had done everything there was to do in music production, I was like what’s next? I felt I should move to composing as well, and I started enjoying it.” He says that composing music was a result of being able to figure out that he’d found his sound: “So let me make an artistic statement with it.”
It was during Cerejo’s stint at Coke Studio @ MTV that he found out that his sound is essentially a marriage of what he calls unexpected elements. He thought he should explore more within this fusion space. “I tried to go beyond the regular jazz fusion which a lot of bands have already explored,” he says. It was in the third season of the same show that he collaborated with classical powerhouse Vijay Prakash and R&B songstress Bianca Gomes.
Later, in 2015, Cerejo went on develop his fusion band Ananthaal with them. “Ananthaal was a response to the synergy that we had created amongst ourselves.”
Music and its lyrics
The first film album he worked on, as a vocal arranger, was 1999 Tamil film Mudhalvan with music by none other than A.R. Rahman. It was for Rahman that Cerejo sang his first song ‘ Endredrum Punnagai ’ (the Tamil version of ‘ O Humdum Soniyo Re ’) for Alaipayuthey (2000). His co-singers for this track were Pravin, Srinivas and Shankar Mahadevan.
His first film as a music composer was Jugni (2016), which was rooted in rural Punjab and so was its music. Ananthaal had both, a Tamil and a Punjabi song. However, neither Tamil nor Punjabi is Cerejo’s language. Given his vocabulary of music is almost entirely in English, does he find it limiting? “I don’t try to set limitations because of my background,” he says. “It is a challenge I embrace. Sometimes you have to play with your weaknesses.”
Almost two decades in the music industry now, how much have things changed so far? “Oh, immensely; and not necessarily for the good,” he sighs. “In the 90s, at least there was a flourishing indie-pop industry, which allowed artistes a medium of self-expression [beyond] the Bollywood canvas.” He cites the examples of Baba Sehgal, Daler Mehndi, Sunita Rao and Shwetha Shetty, who had a voice even without a film script. “Now if you ask anyone their favourite song, it would, by and large, be a Bollywood song. Which big artiste’s private album did you hear recently and remember?” Was Ananthaal his attempt to revive the scene? He smiles, “Absolutely.”
Despite now being labelled as a Bollywood composer, Cerejo makes it sound like he comes from the alternative music space. After all, his biggest hit song till date has been the non-film track ‘ Madaari ’ from the second season of Coke Studio @ MTV. Even his approach towards film music is unlike any regular Bollywood composer.
Music, for Cerejo, is his artistic expression first, yet he tries to be as commercial as possible without compromising. He is critical of the way Bollywood music is being produced currently where music companies create an album only to promote the film and has songs that don’t feel like parts of the soundtrack.
As far as his own method of working for a film is concerned, he calls himself a traditionalist. For instance, Cerejo worked on Kahaani (2012) with Vishal-Shekhar as the producer of the film’s soundtrack. Not all the songs of the soundtrack were used in the film. Incidentally, for the sequel, all of Cerejo songs made the cut for Kahaani 2 . “It was definitely a conscious decision,” he says. “When I make a soundtrack for the film, I want to keep it synergistic with the film. I prefer to have a soundtrack that ends up being an audio signature for the [film’s] storyline,” he says. Speaking more about the alternative music scene, he is happy that indie music is growing, but, is again critical of Bollywood labels trying to do indie. “They do it in a very contrived way,” he says. “It doesn’t have the true indie flavour. They manufacture it. Artistic expression is lost. It is just labels wanting every piece of a pie,” he talks like a purist that he is. “For every initiative indie movement takes, there’s a Bollywood initiative with more capital and backing. It’s not a level playing field. I wish to see an avenue, besides Bollywood, viable enough for musicians to make a decent living out of it.”
Western influences
He has been widely quoted about his early inspirations being music producers like Quincy Jones and Trevor Horn. On being asked about how he fits these names in Hindi film music production, he reminisces about the mistake he made: “Initially, I would go too far with taking Indian melodies and Westernising them, making them sound what I perceive to be international. What I realised, especially while working with Vishal Bhardwaj, that Indian listeners have a different psyche.” This, according to Cerejo, is mainly because of the differences between Indian and Western music. The latter is based on harmonies and Indian music is more about the melody.
Bhardwaj has admitted that his own films’ sound changed from Omkara (2006) which was Cerejo’s first album as a music producer. Talking about the music production process, Cerejo slips into jargony details. I lighten him up by asking if there’s one album that he wishes he had worked on. “ Delhi-6 [2009],” he says. And as we end the interview and do the pictures — incidentally he loves getting clicked — he picks up a Babicz guitar from his 17-strong collection. “Steven Wilson plays this,” he tells me, before slipping into some more details, again.
The author is a freelance writer
