She may have disappointed her father, who wished to see his classical pianist daughter receive a standing ovation at the Albert Hall, but she currently has half a million people, including A R Rahman, cheering her score for the new mob drama Sacred Games. Meet Alokananda Dasgupta, one of a handful of female music directors in Bollywood, who tells Mohua Das about going it alone in a man’s world, conjuring music from noise, and the need to bring background scores to the foreground
Mohua Das (THE TIMES OF INDIA; July 21, 2018)

The apocalyptic chorus in the opening credits of Sacred Games is turning out to be as intriguing as the Laurel-Yanny audio illusion! From kahwa and waah waah to Wadala and Wai Wai, speculation is rife. Please solve this puzzle.

It’s aah waa anne yawa tyu aai — absolute gibberish. I wanted to create a chant with a religious aspect, but at the same time I did not want it to be associated with any religion or country. I wanted it to sound pagan but not witchcrafty. So, I mouthed some nonsensical words on the soundtrack and it fit. A very anti-climactic mystery, actually!

Rahman graciously welcomed you into the “scoring club” on Twitter. But why do you think background scores are still overlooked?
I’ve wondered too. Despite Ilaiyaraja, Satyajit Ray and A R Rahman having set the bar high, it’s only songs that are considered to be music. Even at award shows, it belongs in the technical category. What part of the creativity do they not see? In the West, soundtracks are available in isolation. It’s like the bassline in a rock song. You don’t need to hear it but without it, the song would fall apart. But I think that’s changing now. I’ve never received so much praise for a soundtrack.

You tend to use unconventional sounds — trap rap, water drops, clanging metal, creaks, drones, thuds — alongside classical strings, winds and keys. What guides your musical instincts?
The classical bit comes from my background in piano. Secondly, I’ve been suffering from a noise problem. It started some years ago and it ate me up to an extent that I was hearing noise all the time, be it construction, traffic and motor sounds or the elevator announcement: ‘Please close the door.’ I got my ears tested, checked for Vitamin B deficiency, went to a shrink until I couldn’t deal with it anymore and decided that instead of dreading it, I would look forward to it. I started recording noises and recreating them as musical rhythms. Some of the steel and rubble sounds in Trapped are actual noises from the construction below my floor. It was a personal trip to see if dissonance can attract people and it worked.

How do you define your creative idiom?
I can never let go of my roots in Western classical, Indian folk and attention to melody. Above that bedrock are the ups and downs I’m facing in life, new music and films, people I meet, and the indigenous instruments I discover. To me the sound of the cello is as fascinating as the instrument used for beating cotton mattresses. I think my forte lies in my strong sense of cinema. I really understand narrative and like to defamiliarise the familiar. Anything that you’ve listened to in the past, I want to morph differently.

That sense probably stems from growing up with a famous filmmaker father (Buddhadeb Dasgupta). How did you take to music?
There were many other influences at play. My mother’s grandfather was Rajanikanta Sen (Bengali renaissance poet and composer) and my sister and I were naturally into dance. I was going to take up Odishi as a career but Baba introduced us to piano. We did it as a chore because we weren’t good performers. Then Fauzia Mariker, a music teacher in Kolkata inspired me to study music, for which I went to York University in Toronto. Over time, I realised my happy zone was in the compositional part. I landed in Mumbai to work, assisted Amit Trivedi and then two Marathi films Shala and Fandry came my way. Having grown up on foreign films, a different language or culture didn’t pose a problem. Instead, it opened doors.

We’re seeing women directors, cinematographers, editors; why not more music directors?
I don’t understand why it has been so male dominated for generations although there shouldn’t be anything holding women back. There might be aspects considered easier for men, like handling long and late hours though in a city like Mumbai it isn’t really a problem. There’s also this intimidation of technology. But that’s not imperative to producing good music. I started by writing notations on paper and gradually moved to computing and programming. It can easily be learnt on the job. The craft has nothing to do with gender.

But does it get more difficult when you belong to a minority in an industry within the industry?
Oh yes, there’s definitely an inequality that you know exists but once you get into it, you can change things for yourself. I’ve never faced gender discrimination in terms of wages or work respect. I was always like Matangini Hazra (freedom fighter), expressing myself if I felt something was unfair.