PEOPLE

A musician, composer, partner of a performance club and record label, and one part of band Smoke, Dhruv Ghanekar tells us why he's currently hooked to feature films

Tablas fuse with synthesised sample sounds. A firm to-and-fro bassline features alongside the all-Hindi lyrics. There's jazz and piano. The sound of water, coupled with the edginess of shattering glass introduces you to a beating drum, until Sunidhi's voice takes on, jolting you to reality.
This is Bollywood.

Releasing this Friday, Goldie Behl's Drona starring Priyanka Chopra and Abhishek Bachchan has plenty of reason for music composer of the film, Dhruv Ghanekar, to be smitten with. Even besotted. "It's an action-adventure-fantasy film. Old world meets new world. It's not mythological, but the movie deals with myths. To create a soundtrack that could exemplify all these genres and aspects was challenging, let alone create music for a film of this gamut," explains Dhruv.

He had an open brief

While Goldie gave Dhruv an open brief, and asked for a "modern" sound, Dhruv gauged insight into how the film will be interpreted "visually", by attending narration sessions. He would come back to his studio, brainstorm for hours, then work on each song separately. "Each track is placed in the film for a reason; they come at different (and specific) junctures in the movie, and there is a story behind each. It's not your regular sing-dance tracks," he says.

Drona is rock, electronic, jazz, Bollywood, trance...

Dhruv has created an album that is just. True to the brief contemporary. But, not at the cost of compromising his values. So, while listeners may dub the soundtrack as "cool", "electronic" and "trancey", Dhruv prefers to call it simply salad dressing! "The melody is the most important aspect to crack. The rest is just production, in-studio work."

Dhruv has composed music for over 3,500 ad commercials (Blue Frog Productions), seven feature films, various international projects, and Drona, he believes, is an amalgamation of his diverse repertoire. "Plus, Blue Frog (the live act nightclub he is a partner at) exposes me to music from all over the world," he adds. So, when Goldie demanded the title track be anthemic without being patriotic, Dhruv scavenged influences from all that he had seen, heard and been a part of, to create what you hear finally a powerful, multi-layered number, with a slick choice of sounds, tunes and beats. 

Juggling varied ventures

"Once you work in advertising, that demands you you churn out bhajans and qawalis, snapping in and out of different music styles is a cakewalk." Hot on the heels of Dhruv and Ashu's successful track-video Summertime featuring Kailash Kher, the composer tells us how is also changing Sundays at Blue Frog into a mixed bag of events including film screenings and poetry events. But for right now, Bollywood is all he can think of.

Drona's music is available on CD for Rs 149.
At: All leading music stores