Ram Sings the Saigal Blues

Sampath’s music can’t be canned in neat little boxes of folk or contemporary. Delhi Belly was a wisecracking,witty soundtrack for a romp of a film. While the punk-rock track Bhaag DK Bose became a youth anthem for its naughty lyrics,the other songs showed his command over a slew of genres. (Saigal Blues sung by Chetan Shashital in the nasal style of KL Saigal was part-spoof,part-tribute to the sentimental love songs of old Bollywood.) For Talaash,he composed the background music and the contemplative Jee le zara,and is now a regular in Aamir Khan projects. But it is also true that nine out of 10 times,he is asked to compose only two or three songs in a film. “I get a three-song script and then I have to work to make it a six-song or an eight-song script,” he says ruefully,when we meet him at his ninth floor apartment in Bandra.

He has just got over an “enrichingly exhausting” Coke Studio @MTV recording session. “The theme is Devi,the various forms of the feminine divine,” says Sampath,who is elated by the wide spectrum offered to him. He will present a gospel qawwali,a Rajasthani hip-hop track and a padam that was sung by courtesans in the 16th century. “It’s a chance for me to re-imagine our music,” says Sampath.

Growing up in a half-Tamil,half-Kannadiga family in Mumbai’s Chembur,music was an inseparable part of his life. “I come from an obsessive musical family. As much kicking and screaming as I did,learning music was compulsory,” says Sampath. Both his parents were musically inclined and his grandfather was co-founder of Shanmukhananda Hall,one of Mumbai’s important cultural addresses. Everything from Carnatic music to Hindustani classical and classic rock played at home,and a 10-year-old Ram was introduced to the genius of Mehdi Hassan,Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and MS Subbulakshmi through hundreds of LPs stacked in the living room. He wrote and composed his first song when he was nine. “I wrote some environment-friendly rubbish and put together a basic chord structure,” says Sampath. Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix happened along the way too.

Armed with all the training,he started Colourblind,a little-known band in 1997,which released only one album. With Sampath on vocals,synth and programming and Siddharth Achrekar on guitars,Colourblind brought together grunge,electronica and progressive rock. Sampath soon became the go-to guy for underground musicians. He also produced music for a nascent Indipop scene (he composed Shaan’s Tanha Dil),which began with great promise but quickly went under. “Both rock and Indipop could have developed if the industry wasn’t as short-sighted as it was. I got no funding and ended up losing a lot of money. It was very disheartening,” he says.

Disenchanted,he took his musical skills to advertising,which funded his personal projects. “I wanted to be able to write good songs and expand my palette as a composer. Also,my heroes — Pink Floyd and Miles Davis — had done film scores. So I wanted a chance to be able to explore that space too,” says Sampath. But he found Bollywood music to be formulaic and resistant to new sounds. For example,the tabla-dholak sound defined good music. “I wanted to introduce new sounds and not follow the typical route in films,” says Sampath,who also felt that film music was controlled by a handful of composers. Over the next decade,he made music for a few films like Khakee (2004) and Family (2006),which went unnoticed. “I wasn’t expecting anything good to happen at this stage. Four films got shelved after this. It was a traumatic time,” he says.

In 2008,he sued the powerful Roshans for plagiarism,accusing that four tracks of the film Krazzy 4 were a copy of a jingle he had created for a television commercial. The Bombay High Court held the producers prima facie guilty and awarded Sampath Rs 2 crore. “At that point,one of the things that were tested was my resolve to be in the business. It came down to a matter of integrity. Taking a stand and talking about my intellectual property rights was about giving spine (sic) to other composers. If I didn’t do that,I would have had to wrap up here,” says Sampath.

Two years later,his luck turned with Delhi Belly. “I began getting some work,” says Sampath,who knew he finally had a winner. He followed it up with music for Aamir Khan’s much-popular series Satyamev Jayate,thus becoming a fixture in most Khan projects. “If,at any point,Aamir feels that I am not doing my bit,we will still be friends but we will also move on,” says Sampath,who is not happy with the idea of Bollywood camps that makes it difficult for any newcomer to break in. “Everyone is so insecure,” he says. “The difference between Aamir and 90 per cent of Bollywood is that he doesn’t come from a space of fear and with a band of insiders. He won’t tell me,‘Yaar agar gaana hit nahi hoga,toh apni film pit jayegi’,” says Sampath.

Sampath sees the last 15 years as transition time for film music. “Mainstream is finally paving the way for the indie scene. But earlier there was a basic love for songs in films. Now,the song is completely out of the narrative. As a result,you get a blank page to fill. That’s too much freedom,” he says. In the future,he wants to resume his search for new sounds. “You can be extremely versatile in Bollywood. It’s a big space. With the right producer,it isn’t such a bad place to be in,” he says.