After working on American primetime drama series, This Is Us, for four seasons, the show’s music composer, Siddhartha Khosla bagged a nomination for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score) at the forthcoming 71st Emmy Awards. Of course, he doesn’t see the nomination as a goal that he was working towards. “I was just focussed on doing the best work I possibly could do,” he says over the phone.
He is in the same category as heavyweights Ramin Djawadi ( Game Of Thrones ) and Jeff Beal ( House of Cards ), but it is a big deal in itself that Khosla has made this journey from fronting Goldspot — a rock band with Indian nostalgia-tinged songs — to scoring music for TV and film. These days, the artiste has been performing the soundtrack to This Is Us on stage, but he says it is the first time someone has asked him about his Los Angeles-based band in interviews leading up to the Emmys.
Back to his roots
Goldspot songs like ‘Shadows on the Wall’ and ‘Evergreen Cassette’ have appeared on the show, but Khosla feels they are “two different parts” of his musical career that he loves equally. “I do know that I want to come to India at some point, and perform my [original] score and do a Goldspot show again. I hope fans will be ready for that,” he says.
In the four years that Khosla has spent working with This Is Us creator, Dan Fogelman (who he knows as a college friend and has worked with on a previous show, The Neighbors ), there has been more creative freedom. A turning point was when he realised that the show was about “the interconnected nature of life”. He adds, “At one point, I was writing themes that were more character-driven. And then when I realised that the show is about something larger, all of a sudden, I found a different sound. I started looking at the show through a different lens.”
Fogelman even encouraged the composer to include Indian instrumentation such as tanpura in the show’s score. Khosla ensures this is tastefully done, lest American audiences suddenly start picturing stereotyped faraway lands. As someone who grew up inspired by gilded voices such as Mohammed Rafi, RD Burman, Lata Mangeshkar and Manna Dey, he decided to “try something different” in his scoring work.
“This is a network television show, one of the biggest dramas on American television. It was definitely a risk to try bringing in some Indian inspiration. And I do it in the way that I have always done it, which is that it is not overtly Indian. I’m not doing tablas and sitar .” The composer instead played percussion (“like I would play on a tabla ”) on a wooden table.
Genre neutral
Being in the music composing field also meant Khosla would have to be inspired by more than just what he channelled into Goldspot. Composing has led him to dive deeper into the works of ambient music pioneer Brian Eno. “Just listening to music now is totally different. You start wondering about the sounds being used. It has opened up my listening palate.” Earlier this year, he got signed to performing rights giant ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and worked on the score for Netflix’s film Beats , which is centred around the Chicago hip-hop scene.
All this makes Khosla the one to watch on Emmy night. Even though he’s won a few awards for This Is Us before, at the Broadcast Music Inc (BMI) Film and TV awards in 2017, 2018 and 2019, it is his first time at the Emmys and the first time as a nominee as well. He says, “I’m still surprised and pinching myself. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real. So I’m just trying to enjoy every moment I can. Every morning, I remind myself that I should be incredibly grateful for what’s happening right now.”
The Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be held on September 14 and 15. The 71st Primetime Emmys will air live on Star World on September 23 at 5.30 am.
