When Faizan Hussain, the nephew of Ustad Zakir Hussain, began composing music for his first Tamil film, Pani Thuli, along with his friend and co-music director Agnel, both hadn’t even met the director and producer of the film, Natty and Dr Jay.
“In fact, it was only in October last year that we first met Natty,” begins the unassuming lad, who goes on to give details of how he landed this project.
“Kalpana Pandit, who is one of the actresses in this action-packed love story, suggested our names to Natty, who then got in touch with us over phone. From then, all our conversations and interactions with him have been only over mail and phone. In fact, we didn’t even have the conventional first music sitting. The director mailed us the lyrics and we delivered the songs which he liked, much to our delight. Pani Thuli is being released both in Hindi and Tamil. So, we composed the music for the Hindi lyrics first and that is how this journey began,” informs the musician.
Shot predominantly in the US, the film, which stars Ganesh Venkatraman, Kalpana Pandit and Shobana in the lead, is being billed as a sleek, bond style movie into which director Natty has poured his heart and soul.
Says Faizan, “Although Ragini MMS released first, we began work on Pani Thuli much before we began work on the former. The film has six songs in it and my favourite is the title track. Included in this list of six songs is a Spanish item number and a melancholic number.”
Music is one of those vital components that play a considerable role in determining the class of a film. But to produce music which will make a difference to the final output, one must be able to feel a sense of oneness with the film which is not possible unless one understands the dialogues that are delivered in each scene. How did Faizan manage to compose such haunting tunes? Says the music director, “The songs were relatively easy to compose because my friend and co-music director Agnel understands Tamil as he has several Tamilian friends. What we found really challenging was composing the background score, because the version that was sent to us was the Tamil version. However, we had the Hindi script with us. So, for every scene, we would read the Hindi script to get to know what was happening to compose the score.” That kind of hard work might deter others but not Faizaan. Says the excited music director, “I wouldn’t say it was taxing. I would say it was challenging. On the whole, it has been a fantastic experience and we would love to work on more Tamil films.”