Creative freedom and trust: What went into making Dasvi’s music

Music composer duo Sachin Sanghvi and Jigar Saraiya, who recently worked on Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Dasvi’s music, feel that the film’s narrative offered a wide scope for different kinds of music to be created.

Says Sanghvi, “The music was not just a background score, but there were so many montage like sequences that were completely driven by it, and in a way, the music dominated a part of the narrative.” Saraiya adds that they’ve used a lot of Haryanvi lyrics in the film to give a touch of the local language, but also Bollywood-ised it for the mainstream.

What the duo liked more was how they were given complete freedom to venture into different genres and try different kinds of songs. Sanghvi and Saraiya credit the director Tushar Jalota and producer Dinesh Vijan for giving them artistic freedom throughout the process, for making it easy to communicate and bounce off ideas, and for the trust they put in the composer duo.

For Jalota, Sanghvi is nothing but full of praises. He says, “Working with Tushar was a good experience. He's a very meticulous person. He writes down anything that comes to his head. He doesn't miss anything and communicates very well. He'll also have some references to play so that he's never speaking in thin air. At the same time, he is open when you tell him that you want to do things differently.”

Saraiya is ecstatic that they got to work on a trancy song, an inspirational song, a dance number and a folk song, all in the same project.

What Sachin-Jigar set out to do was create an album that was not stuck in a particular genre, and to let the audiences experience the music in a neutral manner, so that even when the background score is playing, they’re looking at the actors. Sanghvi also believes that each of the three actors has outdone their previous performances with this film.

What made this project special for Sanghvi was how he got to involve the actors in his music as well. Says he, “Abhishek bhai told us about how he would travel with Senior Bachchan sahab when he was a kid, and how Amit ji still pursues his passion for music in a small studio at home. Talking to AB felt like talking to someone who knew music, which was great.”

The composer duo says that they don’t want to pick projects based on the music genre, but their interest lies more in what kind of scripts they pick. Sanghvi says they like working on challenging scripts and making songs that the masses enjoy.

But as the indie music scene in India grows, the duo is also levitating a bit towards that, trying to find their voice in the indie space. Saraiya mentions that while Bachchan Jr. was supposed to record a song for the film, which couldn’t be done due to time and logistic issues, but they hope to work on an indie song with him soon.

Another thing that the duo is really eager to do is produce music for love stories. Says Saraiya, “We've been doing all these highly concept-based films. But now we are itching to do a love story.”