Musical Madness

Awesome talent. Never seen or heard that something like this exists. When you think that you have already seen enough in life and there is nothing more left to be seen, something surprises you so much that you are literally blown away by it. I have been always criticized by friends that I go a little over the top when it comes to appreciate someone or something. But, to me this is something I have never seen, heard or experienced and when the end result is so pleasing to the ears, one has to appreciate it.

Enough of the mystery, I know that if I will take more time to reveal it,  readers of this blog would simply click the close button. To me Sneha Khanwalkar is one of the most underrated music composer in India. She has her own unique way to look at each of the unique sound that is produced around us in normal day to day life. When I first heard the title song of Oye Lucky , Lucky Oye I was glued to it for a long time. I liked the way the various sounds were played in the song. Little did I know then that, tremendous effort is being put in to first record those sounds and finally make a songs out of all those wierd sounds. I am really kicking myself, now for why I never tried to go into more detail about the music and the music composer of the Oye lucky lucky oye. I am generally so particular in finding out everything about the music director whenever I love the music of a particular song or movie.

A few days ago I read in the Times of India about the music review of the film Gangs of Wasseypur. The writer went a little overboard in appreciating the songs of the movie. Now, I am not someone who would generally listen to the songs of a movie before its release and now a days I dont even listen to radio so there was hardly any chance for me to listen to those songs. Another day I read the interview of Manoj Bajpayee in the Pune times about the same movie and that created some interest inside me about this movie. It just happened that I was a bit free in the afternoon and I came across the first look of Gangs of Wasseypur movie on youtube. The promo was awesome and I was really looking forward to see the movie. After all it was a movie by Anurag Kashyap (Director of the movie Dev D). Suddenly, I realized that, off all the things this movie has different music as well. Immediately I found out the website gaana.com and started listening to the songs of the movie Gangs of Wasseypur. And boy, It would be an understatement to say that I loved the songs. The hunter song which is in the voice of a singer named Vedesh Sookoo from Trinidad and Tobbago (West indies) just bowled me over. I listened to all the songs and every song was different. Found out the name of the music director. I could not believe my eyes when I saw Sneha Khanwalkar written as the name of music director. Well my surprise has obvious reasons as she is only the 4th music composer in the male dominated Indian Film industry.

I wanted to hear more about Sneha Khanwalkar. Wanted to know whether she sings as well. Found out that she is a singer herself, but her voice is not her USP :). When I heard a few people like Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap talk about Sneha on youtube, I realized that there is something unique about this girl. Then I came across these MTV Sound Trippin videos. Sound trippin is actually a program on MTV in which Sneha Khanwelkar is the host and a music composer. She travels to some place in India and records various sounds specific to that place, composes some lyrics, gets some locals to sing and records those songs with all the various sounds that she had recorded earlier. If anyone has seen the efforts that had been taken to compose and produce those songs, one will realize the stuff that Sneha Khanwelkar is made of. You are hit by the first blow when you expect a femine, shy, introvert girl and, what you see is an extrovert, macho girl. Its absolutely clear after seeing her that she loves what she is doing. So even after putting in such great efforts she seems to be happy always. Someone has very rightly said that exellence comes when you love what you do  and life is really fun when you love your job. (No, I am not talking about Aamir Khan :))

Here is the link to the first episode of Sound Trippin in which Sneha went to Punjab and recorded the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21kvYl0Mds
Awesome song indeed.Watch the video and you will realize the talent this girl has got and she makes no bones about it. I have discovered some new kinda music and a music composer to follow. I would really be looking forward to more from Sneha. Normal is boring and we keep searching for something new always. The musical madness of Sneha Khanwalkar is one such step in that direction.