Striking and attractive, Sneha Khanwalkar is a force to be reckoned with. Bollywood’s fourth female music director, she has carved a niche for herself in a predominantly male domain. The prestige of being unique and successful sits easily on her lithe shoulders and she frankly confides: “When I started it out, more than a gender bias, it was my age and inexperience that I needed to get over. The veterans of the industry worked and thought differently and adjusting was a slight struggle. That you are a woman in a male space doesn’t strike you all the time. However, I did work with a saarangi player who refused to look at me throughout the recording. He looked only at the sound engineer. It was discouraging, but he did finally take to me in the end.”
Sneha is host and composer of MTV’s Sound Trippin’ , a show that is both a musical journey and discovery. She was in Bangalore at Intel’s invitation to share her experiences with Sound Trippin’ with the Intel team, as the Intel Ultrabook was her constant companion. Khanwalkar truly makes both ‘journey’ and ‘discovery’ synonymous. Collecting ‘sounds’ from different parts of the country, she sets out to prove a point.
“Sounds that one would never associate with music have the potential to be just that. Music is eventually for your ears; how your body and mind perceive it is unpredictable. Music should not be a medium restricted to a select few. My aim is to make sure that my music does not alienate anything audio.”
She has travelled north and south, in an effort “to give opportunities to artists who have never before recorded in a studio.”
“ Sound Trippin’ is a discovery of people and places through travel and technology. I can use sound and voices only because of tech support. The science of sound allows you to tweak music to your benefit, eliminating external factors like a noisy city.”
Sneha breaks down the bittersweet cliché of travelling to Delhi or Mumbai to fight circumstances and make it big with practical advice: “Make your music wherever you are. In fact, make music with your gardener and connect to the industry from home using your computer.”
Music director for the critically acclaimed Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, Love, Sex aur Dhoka and Gangs of Wasseypur , she acknowledges that music direction is ambiguous and suggests that it is this ambiguity that dissuades women from entering the profession.
“I like to make songs. The procedure involves meeting the director and understanding what he wants to communicate to the audience. The directors I have worked with — Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap — are largely experimental in their approach. They tell you what the film is about and you compose tunes, either working in sync with a lyricist or working separately and then putting it all together. You book sessions with artists, write out your music and finally complete the process with mixing and mastering. Technology allows people to work separately. It allows for portability of work and the independent creativity of the artist.”
Her family is intrinsically involved with Hindustani classical music.
“My mother’s family was deeply involved in the heavy, powerful Gwalior gharana style of Hindustani classical music. Singing was a family tradition and I hated being called away from a game of carom to sing. At the same time, I was listening to music that my family considered ‘corrupt’. My relatives’ apathy towards music that my friends listened to and vice versa made me question this misunderstood notion of purity. It triggered my career.” She has found “deep pleasure” in Punjabi and Bihari music and has enjoyed discovering places through music.
“I discovered a very different side of Goa through music. Beaches and parties tell of a different Goa altogether.”
She smiles wryly on being asked about her song, ‘Hunter’, from Gangs of Wasseypur . For obvious reasons, it has piqued everyone’s curiosity.
“Using music from Trinidad allowed me to create an ironic fusion. Chutney music, which developed from Bihari folk music, has really fast dholak beats. I’m taking this music back to Bihar and introducing to the State another forgotten part of itself, all the way across the world in Trinidad. The voices retain Bihar’s texture and grain, but integrate an alien accent. It seemed cinematically apt.” She finishes on a stirring note.
“The ideal fusion sound is created by bringing together diverse people, allowing for fusion in music, genre and poetry.”
