In conversation with Anand Bhaskar on the musical world of Masoom

Playback singer and composer Anand Bhaskar ’s magical transition into the world of music from advertising, to feature films, to web series is a dream come true. Bhaskar quit his corporate job a few years ago to create his own independent music. His career as a professional, full-time musician started with singing and composing for ad campaigns, then going on to singing songs in films like  _Baaghi 2_  and Mission Mangal and his first project of repute, as a composer, came with highly acclaimed web series  _Mirzapur_  followed by Bombay Begums and most recently the psychological thriller  Masoom  on Amazon Prime. Bhaskar, a trained musician in various genres, is hugely inspired by A R Rahman and Amit Trivedi and he is also the founder of the band, ‘Anand Bhaskar Collective’. Together they deliver perfectly blended Hindi rock songs that have elements of Indian classical, rock, metal and electronica. In a candid conversation with Firstpost, the musician talks about how independent and Bollywood music work, changing scenarios in Hindi and popular film music, future of indie music and more. Excerpts from the interview: How did you decide the musical world for a story like Masoom? I first look at where the story is based, what are the surroundings, what are the emotions. In Masoom it is Punjab and that is how it is decided upon the tone. Before I begin scoring I read the script, then I sit with the director. I sat with Mihir (Desai) and discussed the musical references. Then we narrowed down the instruments that will bring out the flavour of the locale, scenes, then it is like marrying the traditional instruments with the non-traditional ones to create a score that is universally palatable. Both of us synced on the whole world cinema look, feel and sound for the score. Then Mihir went on a recce and by that time I was ready with a bunch of themes for him to listen to and one of them was the title sequence. And because I had read the script I had in mind the kind of musical directions the theme will take. I am a huge fan of subtle, sombre, intense storyline kind of shows, I love shows like Ozark and Dark (both on Netflix). These are slow paced shows. I wanted to create something similar but also contextualise it for the Indian audience. What is happening in the Indian OTT space is that a lot of shows that are being made across all platforms are very fast paced, I haven’t seen a show like Masoom where it is so subtle and also fast paced at the same time. There is a sombre speed to it and I think that is something I really liked about it and that inspired me and my team to write the score. You have composed for big OTT shows like Mirzapur, Bombay Begum and now Masoom, and you have also worked in Bollywood, what is the difference that you find between films and digital? Working in Bollywood and working in OTT space are quite different in a sense that OTT allows you to experiment. It is aimed at this newer audience that doesn’t necessarily only consume traditional forms of entertainment. They want newer story lines; they want darker themes. That is where for filmmakers and musicians like me there is an opportunity to bring in new influences and new sounds whereas when I am working for a Bollywood film there is this mind-set that whatever we make has to be a banger. It is a very song centric industry not so much a music centric industry; OTT is a more music centric industry. For example, in Bollywood films songs get a lot more importance than the background score. That is also interesting in a way that if I am working with a film producer, they will come with the brief that this is the situation, this is the song and, of course the song needs to be catchy enough to be popular. That puts a constraint on you and sometimes you thrive under that constraint. It teaches you how to work under restrictions, whereas in OTT you are given a free hand. The experimentation is limitless. These days web series title tracks have their own audiences, people are putting that music as ringtones and caller tunes. Background score as an aspect of films and shows was in the background until the OTT wave came in. Now we can really go the whole nine yards in composing music for OTT. You quit your corporate job to create music, how has your experience in corporate set-up helping you in your music? I have been inclined towards music since I was a child. My mother identified that in me and she pushed me towards it but there was this pressure to have a backup career in case music doesn’t work out. But the problem is your backup career many times becomes your primary career. In 2014 I decided that if I don’t do music now I don’t think I will ever do it and I took the plunge. I feel all experiences accumulate and culminate into what we are today. I am able to articulate and express what I feel because I worked with some of the best talents in the advertising industry and the corporate world. I can write my emails really well and that I feel is a bonus when you come from a corporate experience. It has also disciplined me in a way that I am an excel sheet person. What theme of music needs to be ready by which date is all very documented for me. How did OTT happen? I have always wanted to be a composer and when I quit my job to take up music full time I had a strategy in mind. Because I am also a singer my first priority was to build a singer’s portfolio, so I started with ads. Slowly I started singing for films and then getting into OTT space. I was simultaneously releasing original music with my band Anand Bhaskar Collective which is Hindi alternative rock and it is all original music. Every time somebody asks me how you got this project, I tell them that every composition project that I have today is because of my original music. Somehow that original music found its audience and that audience started growing big. Today we have crossed five million streams on our discography only on Spotify and that is just one streaming platform. It is all original music not backed by any label, we don’t have huge promotional budgets but somehow it has found its way to people who make decisions. Ankur Tiwari, who was the musician supervisor for Gehraiyaan and Gully Boy, recommended my name to Excel, the producers of Mirzapur who were looking for a new composer. Ankur is an icon for indie musicians because he is making a lot of efforts at a larger level to inject independent music into commercial cinema. That was the first time I was working on somebody else’s brief and I realised that I am not bad at it. That led to Mirzapur season 2, Bombay Begums and now Monsoon. During the pandemic I was working on a lot of ads from home and alongside I acquired knowledge on music production, mixing and sound engineering principles and that really contributed towards my skills as a composer. I wrote a lot of new music which I would constantly share with my filmmaker and musician friends just to get their feedback. One thing led to another and I was approached for Masoom. In due course of time I gravitated from being a singer to composer. How has the advertising industry helped you in your journey of music?   When I was working as a strategy and planning guy in advertising I understood how business works technically. That understanding a lot of young musicians who straightaway go into music lack because a lot of times artists enter the art business with a lot of passion but don’t have an understanding about how it works as a business. I feel I had that understanding and my first goal was that I had sustainable income through music. The first three years I was relentlessly singing ads which paid my bills. I learnt how to work with production houses, how to network, how to expand yourself in terms of adding more skills to your repertoire… Advertising industry helped me see how to see music as a business and not just get carried away by the emotion of it all. I made sure that I get paid for my efforts. Artists are given that picture, ‘Oh, we are giving you an opportunity, why are you expecting money?’, or they get paid very less and that leads to financial stress. Once your finances are taken care of you have the mental and emotional bandwidth, you are comfortable and you can focus on other aspects of your art and for me that was music composition, music production, learning new instruments and getting back to learning classical vocals. It is seen that independent music usually doesn’t get a proper launch, it doesn’t get promoted as compared to popular film music. In such a scenario how do you look at the growth of independent music? There is a very slow change in the mind-set of the music consumers. Independent music has definitely grown a lot but it is not enough for an ecosystem to really compete with the likes of Bollywood, or Punjabi industry which is the biggest independent industry. They are not driven by films or labels and there needs to be that level of clarity and coherence in other non-label independent music industries. A lot of time independent musicians get caught up in creating the perfect release. The mix, the production and the music video has to be perfect and due to which release suffers. They end up delaying release and by the time they are ready to release the track that sound has already become passé. If your album is ready, think of smart ways of releasing music and developing assets. Independent music is not backed by a label, there is less of marketing, less of directly pointing the music to consumers which means it will grow slowly but it will surely grow for a longer period of time. But if you are an independent musician you need to keep working at your music and be consistent at releasing it, at least every alternate month one track should come out if not an album. If one track gets picked up and it gets played, or becomes popular, or it gets viral, it back channels all that attention and traffic into your existing discography. It always happens to us, our monthly listeners go up every time we release a new song. What next ? We are working on a project called Dr Arora, a web series which is created by Imtiaz Ali. Then, I have got a bunch of films and maybe another web series, and of course, we will be writing new music for our band, right now we are taking a break from all the commercial projects. I have sung quite a lot of film songs this year but as playback singers we can never reveal which film we have sung for unless and until you see the film on screen because sometimes singers are changed at the last minute and you can’t really do anything about it. But I have worked for some really brilliant composers. I have sung for other composers in the OTT space as well. I have done scores for a couple of short films, so a lot of music will be released this year. I will be singing and composing everywhere now be it ads, OTT, films. I have done a film called Rat on a Highway starring Randeep Hooda. It was unveiled at the Cannes film festival this year. Is Bollywood thinking differently now as compared to when you were working on films earlier? Now I am meeting more of the new school of filmmakers and their sensibilities are similar to mine which means they will also have a producer on board who has similar sensibilities. In my journey as a composer I have finished a series for Amazon Prime before I finished Masoom and in that series the music was completely retro and funk. We actually got R D Burman’s trumpet player Kishore Soda to come and play for us. That was a very different style for me. Mirzapur, Masoom is very world cinema. Dr Arora is going to be quirky and it is going to be a mix of rock and folk elements. When all this work comes out filmmakers become a little confident that this guy can handle different genres and I am fortunate to meet filmmakers who are open-minded. There are filmmakers who usually work with one composer for one type, one genre of music, for world cinema, commercial cinema, humorous music… but I can handle beats well no matter what world they belong to and that is the confidence I inspire in the filmmakers who I work with and they are comfortable working with me because of that. Things are changing because of this new school of filmmaking and new themes being explored in terms of storytelling which is leading to new and fresh work. That is what matters to us. Seema Sinha is a Mumbai-based mainstream entertainment journalist who has been covering Bollywood and television industry for over two decades. Her forte is candid tell-all interviews, news reporting and newsbreaks, investigative journalism and more. She believes in dismissing what is gossipy, casual, frivolous and fluff. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.