Candid chat with Gangs of Wasseypur music composer, Sneha Khanwalkar

She has given two years of her life and creative blood to the music of Gangs Of Wasseypur (GOW). And young Sneha Khanwalkar is still at it. She is still working on the final sound of Gangs Of Wasseypur 2. For those who loved the localized flavorful colloquial and yet cool and utterly visual quality of sound in Sneha’s songs in GOW…here’s news. Picture abhi baki hai mere dost! Working feverishly on part 2 Sneha has on the anvil a song by the legendary Bihari folk singer Sharda Sinha in the sequel. “And it isn’t one of her well-known songs. It’s an original composition with original words.” No second-hand sounds for Sneha, who has been traveling to distant parts of India and abroad collecting authentic sounds for her music. It’s a unique way of looking at music composition, with sounds and singers from the most basic part of the globe coming forward to give Sneha the kind of veracity that she believes her music must adhere to. For the track Hunter in GOW Sneha travelled all the way to Trinidad in the West Indies, stayed with the locals, got the sound she needed and returned happy having achieved what she had set out to. Recalls Sneha, “I had heard a style of singing in Trinidad & Tobago known as Chutney Music. I wanted that for my soundtrack. I insisted on going all the way to the other end of the world to Trinidad, stayed in a small place called Barataria with a Guyanese girl, searched out the sound and singer, recorded and returned.” There are golden moments of sound-search entrenched in Sneha’s mind as she collected the music for GOW. Says Sneha, “I went to Patna, Muzaffarpur and other parts of Bihar. I also spent time in Varanasi looking for my music. In Patna I found a housewife Rekha Jha who sang only within her home, never publicly. I convinced her to sing O Womaniya with another singer Khushboo Raj from Varanasi. They were such a study on contrasts. But when they sang together it was sheer magic.” Sneha has recorded the behind-the-scenes experience of her two-year experience of collecting sounds for Wasseypur. Ask her what she’s doing next and this nomadic musician has no answers. “I’ve a makeshift studio. I’ll go wherever it takes me. I am still very new to the rules of Bollywood. There haven’t been too many female music composers here, have there? Actress Nargis’ grandmother Jaddanbai was a well-known music composer. And then there was Usha Khanna. If now I am seen as a new female composer in Bollywood I have a lot to be pleased about.”