When it comes to modern rom-coms, tales of culturally-crossed, destined-to-be soulmates are tales as old as time. Whether it be “Mississippi Masala,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” or “The Wedding Banquet,” sons and daughters has defied their hopelessly old school but well-meaning parents and their motherland cultural baggage, often to find happiness with people from other races as well as sexual persuasion. It’s as sure fire a way to a happy ending as that climactic race to the airport. While it very pleasantly doesn’t break that mold, the question of “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is what happens when the new school adult throws in the towel as it were to mom and dad’s choice of an arranged marriage – a tradition not exactly admired by the west. But for unlucky in love documentarian Zoe (Lily James), the chance to chronicle her perhaps-more-than-childhood pal “Kaz’s” (Shazad Latif) decision to let his Pakistani parents decide his romantic fate opens up a window to look at a practice where romance seemingly plays second fiddle to lifetime commitment – with all colorful threads from England to Pakistan leading to a rom-com’s biggest time-honored tradition of all.
The musical tosses and turns of arriving at said destination are charmingly weaved by English-born Indian composer Nitin Sawhney. As a prolific composer-DJ-song producer and writer among his many talents, Sawhney definitely knows his way around the musical cross-cultural track with such notable scores as “The Namesake” and “Pure,” movies whose South Asian protagonists often come to grips with their cultural identity. While “What’s Love Got to Do with It” might not exactly have their super-serious weight by nature of its genre, it’s an often lovely and enchanted score, graced with the stuff of attractive orchestral, guitar and piano melody that’s about the fairy tale fulfillment that Zoe yearns for in more than obvious company. Reflecting at first the environment of urbane London, Sawhney uses a trip to Pakistan for Kaz’s wedding to open up the score to ethnic instruments that create an enchanted east-meets-west masala, softly getting across the kind of lyrically yearning emotion of the most obvious match on hand.
Not that the Ivor Novello lifetime achievement awarded Sawhney has to worry about his musical fate being set in cross-cultural stone, as his far-ranging stylistic scoring that travels from India to England has a resume that includes massive fantasy videogames, gritty science fiction as well as heavy drama and dazzling mocap for his pal Andy Serkis, along with a forthcoming entry into Neil Gaiman’s fantastical universe of gods even older than romantic tradition. But it’s by delivering this charming valentine of a culturally inclusive score that Sawhney is bound to win more musical hearts for a question whose answer is fated.
Tell us about your own musical upbringing, and what led you to composing among your other endeavors?
I started playing classical piano from an early age (5) and went on to play jazz piano when I was a little older. I also studied flamenco guitar from the age of around 8 and played in a lot of rock bands through my teens. Near to where I lived in Rochester, Kent (UK) there was a Sikh Temple where I studied sitar and tabla in my early teens and got me into the idea of putting together music from different cultures. My Dad’s record collection was eclectic as were the collections of my brothers and my Mum. So, I spent a lot of time listening to music from Africa, Cuba and a lot of American/British rock and pop bands. Most interestingly my Mum’s record collection included a lot of Indian classical music, and I was particularly fond of Ravi Shankar’s sitar recordings. All of this, along with an early appreciation of Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone kindled my interest in composition.
What was it like in the beginning of your career segueing between English films like “Pure” and Indian ones like “Hari Om?” And what do you think the biggest differences, and similarities were between how both countries approach film music?
I wrote the music for the film “Pure” back in the very early 2000s. By this time, I’d written quite a lot of film music, as my first film score was around 1993 with the BBC film, “Flight.” So, by the time I was asked to score “Pure” I was a fairly experienced film composer. Not long after scoring “Pure” I wrote the music for “Hari Om.”
First of all, with the film “Pure,” I was given very little time to create the music as it had not worked out with the previous composer, and they brought me in at the last minute. As a result, a lot of the music was largely just me in a room, playing guitar and piano with the director and editor present. The film was very powerful, and I believe it was the first starring role for Keira Knightley. “Hari Om” was largely recorded in India. I went over there and met some amazing artists, including Ashwin Srinivasan, a bansuri (Indian bamboo flute) player with whom I have since worked with many times. In fact, he is now in my band and on many albums of mine.
The biggest difference between approaching western films and Indian based arthouse movies is in the use of instrumentation. The essence of working on any source of visual narrative musically is to find the emotional subtext and breathe life into that. Human stories are the same across the world, so if I am allowed to, I will build a vocabulary that is appropriate to the story, and not the geography of the film.
You’d been scoring films about Indians dealing with cultural identity in western cultures before you had an art cinema breakthrough over here with Mira Nair’s “The Namesake.” Tell us about that experience.
Before I worked on Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” I worked on numerous films focusing on the Indian diaspora dealing with the conflict between their inherited cultural identity and context. Examples of those films included the BBC film “Flight” I scored in 1993, “Anita and Me” for Lionsgate films, “Split Wide Open,” “Hari Om” and a TV miniseries called “Second Generation” which starred Parminder Nagra. Each of those films required a unique score that was about responding to the psychology of the main characters around identity issues. I always try to ensure that my musical response to character development and storyline is about serving the vision of the director along with enhancing the emotional power of the story. In each of those films mentioned above, I needed to find the right balance between orchestration, my own musical instrumentation/ performance and electronic sound design that reflected the heritage and context of the characters.
Talk about working with Andy Serkis on “Breathe” and his version of “Mowgli,” which was considerably darker than the previous “Jungle Book” incarnations.
Andy is an incredible director, as well as being a legendary and brilliant actor. He also happens to be a great friend of mine. So, scoring his two debut films “Breathe” and “Mowgli” was an incredible honor. Andy’s attention to detail and imagination are incredibly inspiring to work with. He formed a fantastic bond with the lead actor, Rohan Chand and drew a phenomenal performance from him. Obviously, the film features a great deal of motion capture work and so a lot of the scenes I was working on weren’t fully realized until quite late in the process. However, I did get to go to South Africa and spent time on the set, musically supervising scenes and finding a great deal of inspiration in the landscape where much of the action was filmed. Andy is very immersive in the way in which he works and so I found myself living and breathing “Mowgli” for a couple of years while it was being made. My biggest breakthrough with the score was when I just sat down at the piano and put up four QuickTime movies of different scenes on my TV screen and simply accompanied them intuitively. It was from that moment that the entire score evolved, and I found the main theme that Andy loved.
What was the challenge of scoring a videogame with “Heavenly Sword?”
This was my first video game scoring experience and it also happened to be with Andy Serkis, who I had first met back in the 90s when we worked on a play together. Andy was directing the motion capture sequences and so it was my first encounter with his brilliance and hugely inventive mind. The biggest challenge of scoring “Heavenly Sword” was to find a way to work with the success and failure paths of the potential players whilst simultaneously serving the narrative of the game and bringing out characterization. This was a very technical exercise at times where we would have to look at how to work with musical narrative in a nonlinear way. I worked very closely with the game’s sound designer, Tom Colvin on this, and he taught me a great deal about how games are put together, and the major differences between film scoring and game scoring. Most often we would be working with cut scenes and transitions that would move the story along between gameplay, but there was a great deal of music to be written for the gaming moments too. Overall, I had to deliver multiple “milestones” during a two-year process of scoring ‘Heavenly Sword’, and it was immensely satisfying to complete the music.
What was it like venturing to the sci-fi arena with “Settlers?”
I really enjoyed working with Wyatt Rockefeller on “Settlers.” I still believe this is a really underrated science-fiction movie with great performances from a brilliant cast. I grew up as a huge science-fiction fan, reading everything from Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven novels to Brian Aldiss’ and Douglas Adams’ work. Wyatt’s background as an environmentalist really gave the film a great deal of authenticity which comes through clearly in the research behind the film. Wyatt is definitely a perfectionist, and we spent a great deal of time exploring possibilities in creating a unique vocabulary musically for the film. Sometimes I would be banging around on plastic bottles to find a drum sound that did not sound cliched or like anything we had encountered before one scene. For example, it’s literally just me with a plastic bottle tuned down so this sounds like a huge drum. Given that the film was about an isolated colony on Mars and involved a constant sense of tension and threat, it was important to find music that felt fresh, dark and unique. I really enjoyed scoring that film. You learn from every project that you work on, but scoring that film felt like a masterclass in discovery and invention.
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is about as different a film as imaginable from director Shekhar Kapur’s “Bandit Queen,” which was his breakthrough international film before he went on to do the dramatically heavy “Elizabeth” films and “The Four Feathers.” What was your collaboration like, and what do you think made him adept at a comedic change of page?
Working with Shekhar Kapur has always been an ambition of mine. I was astounded by his work with “Bandit Queen” and the “Elizabeth” films. I still consider him a genius and his work reflect that. “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” was particularly enjoyable as I got to spend time with Shekhar, as well as Naughty Boy, who wrote one of the film’s songs with me, and Jemima Khan, the scriptwriter. The four of us formed a deep bond that has continued beyond the scoring process. Given that this was Jemima ‘s first script, I thought it was absolutely brilliant and had a real sense of fun to it. Shekhar has a mischievous sense of humor and knew exactly how to bring out the comedic aspects of the film, as well as the drama, for which he is known. Shekhar is a very deep multifaceted man whose insight into human psychology is at times almost supernatural. I believe he can turn his hand to anything, and that is why the transitions between comedy and melancholy felt so seamless, let alone the huge cultural dichotomy he had to navigate.
“Kaz” (Shazad Latif) and Zoe (Lily James)
Have you known anyone who had an arranged marriage, and what’s your personal feeling about it?
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is about a Muslim man determining his feelings for a white English non-Muslim woman and vice versa. As someone of Hindu heritage, I don’t think I have encountered the same experiences as the characters in the film. However, one of my two brothers chose to have an arranged marriage, whereas the other one did not. I believe arranged marriages can work as long as both parties are consenting, willing and open-minded about the idea. There is a lot to be said for families coming together as well as individuals. Many marriages break down because of social or cultural incompatibility. Arranged marriages are one way in which that can be avoided. In my own mind, the jury is out on the pros and cons of arranged marriages, but I have nothing against them at all in principle, as long as all parties are communicating and consenting.
Was it more difficult scoring Zoe or Kazim’s character, given that she sleeps about, and he evidently never has? Or do you think the characters can be as frustrating as they are loveable in their bad decisions?
I wasn’t so much interested in creating leitmotifs for characters as finding the musical evolution and development of the film’s narrative. I also think it is important as a composer not to score with judgement, but with empathy and to find what is interesting in each of the characters from their own perspective rather than mine.
Talk about the bell and string fairy tale nature of the score, especially as Zoe loves telling them to children as a stand-in for her not being able to find happiness?
I really liked the way in which Jemima and Shekhar used fairytales to represent a metaphor for Zoe, talking to her inner child, and trying to find peace through the turmoil of her relationships with men. Because this was a motif that ran through the film, it needed to have an immediately recognizable association with traditional fairytales, and so I used instrumentation and orchestration that reflected how most of us perceive the stories we are told as children.
There’s particularly beautiful use of the piano in the score. What made that instrument appropriate here?
Thank you for saying that. Piano was my first instrument, so I really enjoyed playing piano on the score. I felt the piano really worked to get across a sense of intimacy with the characters and as an instrument that could work well between Indian classical and western classical, musical themes. I believe the piano is probably the most versatile instrument of all, given how you can adapt it to underscore any situation at all.
I noticed that there’s no “Indian” sound to the score until the characters go to the wedding in Pakistan, and then that ethnic quality plays a part in the score from that point on. Why did you make that decision?
I did not make that decision. The music just evolves the way it does, following the character and narrative. I worked very closely with both Jemima and Shekhar on making decisions about what worked for each cue.
Talk about scoring the Pakistan sequence and writing a song for Kaz’s wedding there (which has two versions on the album), as well as the similarly 21st century meets traditional Indian songs on the album that you collaborated with Naughty Boy and Lily James.
The scoring for the Pakistan sequence primarily uses bansuri and strings to create the mood of the engagement and the meeting of the Pakistani bride to be. The music largely wrote itself in that I was using Ragas that worked well with the characterisation and scenes. I also wrote one wedding song with Naughty Boy and some other artists called ‘Mahi Sona’ which has a remix featuring Joy Crookes, another mix featuring Lily James and of course the original featuring the amazing vocals of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. I didn’t actually work on any other songs with Naughty Boy, but I wrote two other songs which feature the voice of Dhruv Sangari called ‘Nachho Gaao’ and ‘Apni Suno’. The whole process was very enjoyable.
What do you think makes a memorable rom-com, and rom-com score?
I liked growing up with old black and white rom coms like “The Apartment” featuring Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon as well as later films like “When Harry Met Sally.” I have never been a big fan of comedy that simply goes for big laughs but prefer instead the kind of rom coms that stick in your mind for their romantic tension and comedic subtlety. Examples of these include the Audrey Hepburn films “Charade” and “Roman Holiday.” A great rom-com score is not one that brings too much attention to the music but allows you to enjoy the performances and narrative of the film.
The film is very much part of the cross-cultural, rom-com tradition of young characters escaping from their well-meaning, but old school and old country parents that you can see in films from Mia’s “Mississippi Masala” to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Given that, how did you want the score to have its own identity?
I think the idea of the score having its own identity automatically arises from finding the music that works best with the film itself. If the film is inspiring and unique then I think the music will always be too as one follows the other. I try not to overthink creating a unique identity to the music, but I do look for an emotional power or narrative flavor that is specific to the film.
The score ends up being quite emotional in its last third when Kaz and Zoe “break up.” How did you want to hit that change in tone without going over the top with it – as it’s a given that they’ll end up together.
I think that the way in which the film is written and directed has a nuance and subtlety that allows the music to find its own tone. We don’t really see Kaz and Zoe kiss until the last scene, so I think there was little chance in creating anything that felt too melodramatic as the performances were measured and well considered.
It’s interesting that while the film starts off seeking to shine light on people’s reactions to the ideas of arranged marriages, “Love” doesn’t end up casting the best light on it in favor of people making their own decisions. Did that irony hit you?
Not really as I don’t consider the film to be didactic in that way. It is about the experiences and coming together of two people who have their own very different perspectives on the world. The conclusion of the film feels like the shared part of a Venn diagram where Zoe and Kaz can meet. I don’t think Shekhar nor Jemima sought to push us into any kind of judgement on what kind of marriage works best. The film just presents marriage as a backdrop to the protagonists’ emotional development.
Do you think there are more opportunities given to artists from the Indian region given the success of “Slumdog Millionaire” and “RRR?” And in that respect, how do you think “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” adds to the cinematic and scoring melting pot of east meeting west?
I think “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is one of many films that helps to normalize international experiences as part of mainstream cinema.
What can we expect for your upcoming score for the tv miniseries adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book “Anansi Boys?”
I am currently really enjoying working on this TV series as well as Disney Nature’s forthcoming documentary about tigers. I am not allowed to talk too much about these at this stage, but I am very confident that both these projects will be wonderful when they are finished.
SHOUT! Studios’ “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is now in theaters, with Nitin’s score on Mercury Classics HERE
Visit Nitin Sawhney’s website HERE
\Special thanks to Jeff Sanderson