After an ill-conceived feature film on Mohammad Azharuddin and a decently made biographical film on M.S. Dhoni in 2016, this year it is the turn of the biggest of them all: Sachin Tendulkar. While the docudrama itself has generated much buzz for obvious reasons, adding to the hype is the fact that the music for the film is handled by another legend of our times, A.R. Rahman. Lyricist Irshad Kamil joins ARR, two years after they worked together on Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha .
The percussion-dominated orchestral sound is an oft employed format for heroic tracks, but the track ‘Sachin Sachin’ is an engaging listen all the same. Largely owing to the suitably energetic and soulful singing by Sukhwinder Singh, interspersed with Kaly’s rapping, and more importantly, that titular chant of “Sachin Sachin” that is bound to evoke bittersweet memories in every fan’s mind.
The inspirational ‘ Hind Meri Jind’ continues with the atmospheric sound, but has a more soothing arrangement. Nice listen this one, too, despite being higher on the familiarity scale. Composer A.R. Rahman himself handles the vocals on this one, a factor that adds to the familiarity. Rahman’s son A.R. Ameen gets the soundtrack’s best song, the sprightly folk fusion piece titled ‘ Mard Maratha ’ that starts off sounding like the folk elements that might oddly be from North of Maharashtra (that wind instrument at the start feels a lot like the Kutchi instrument, jodiya pawa), before the Marathi percussion kicks in. It’s a fun ride from then on, highlighted by the strings-percussion combination in the first interlude. It is Ameen’s singing counterpart, Anjali Gaikwad, who steals the show, however, with a brilliantly nuanced rendition of Irshad Kamil’s lines, which also incorporate Marathi verse in the track.
This one’s a short and sweet soundtrack from Rahman and Kamil, yet devoid of anything exceptional.
While a film like Sachin: A Billion Dreams probably does not have much scope for songs, the Sachin-ARR fanboy in me was still hoping for something mind-blowing. Hopefully, the movie’s background score will carry an element of surprise absent in the film’s three tracks.