Composer Sneha Khanwalkar: ‘In the inclusion of everything, somewhere lies my music’

Music composer Sneha Khanwalkar.

Sneha Khanwalkar’s music has been described in many ways but the music composer of films such as Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008) and Manto (2018), among others, prefers calling it ‘creative experimental’ music. Before Hindi cinema, she arrived on our television sets with unique sounds of India on the show MTV Sound Trippin (2012). Khanwalkar, 40, recently composed the music for director Ishan Shukla’s short animation film The Bandits of Golak’s which is one among nine shorts included in the second season of the animated anthology Star Wars: Visions. In this interview with Moneycontrol, she talks about the music’s making. Edited excerpts:

The collaboration with Star Wars happened because of Ishan Shukla. He is the director of The Bandits of Golak, the short film from India for the anthology. Ishan and I have been associated for the last two years mainly because I am also working on his other film which is a feature length animation film called Schirkoa. So, when he was doing Star Wars, he asked me to join him.

No, I have not been a big Star Wars buff and I still am not, but I have obviously been following the soundtrack of the movies for so many years because as all of us know, it’s a classic! That was the only association I had but mainly also because Star Wars is a part of our life. I think when I get around to seeing it, I will feel like I missed out on something! (Laughs)

The brief that was given to me was that it had to be Indian and epic. It had to be very rooted but also have the grandeur of Star Wars. The characters that Ishan has built for the short film also demand that.

There’s a lot of assumption of how Indian music is and mainly for the West, it is mainly the tabla or the sitar. We wanted to not diss these instruments because they are so known to the West but we wanted to give them a bit of everything. We have tried to stay more on the world music side and mainly brought out Indian instruments wherever necessary because as I said, the characters are Indian and Indianised. We have really gone by the picture and not really manipulated the soundtrack in any way. In fact, we have done it with a lot more freedom than one gets to have when doing commercial music in India where you have to sometimes maybe cater to a certain kind of instrumentation. Here, I believe we could stay as close to the film as possible.

Composing for digital series has been pretty fresh; it’s been exciting because one is not used to such a long format. I have to say that the time I had on Tabbar (2021) or in composing the title track for Cinema Marte Dum Tak (2023) have been really enjoyable.

I would say it’s creative experimental music. The other thing to call it would be to say that it is really fun and jugaadu because we don’t like to exclude any kind of instruments or voices, even sounds for that matter. We don’t exclude anything to come to our studio. I feel that in the inclusion of everything, somewhere lies my music.

Honestly, I am really loving motherhood at the moment and I have this little baby who is keeping me busy but it’s a very happy busy and also bringing a lot of new perspectives into my work.

I am working on a couple of really interesting projects, a few I can talk about and some I cannot. Apart from Ishan’s Schirkoa, which is a French and German production, I am working on the background score for my husband Kanu Behl’s film Despatch with Manoj Bajpayee. I am also working on a film with one of my absolute favourite directors who I worked with, that’s a hint! We are working on something which is, maybe, a little too early to speak about. There’s a lot more! I also like to do other sound art and artistic events around music and sound, so I have also been curating for Serendipity Arts Festival and that is great fun. I am planning a bunch of residencies for pure sound.