GANGS OF WASSEYPUR: Sneha Khanwalkar arrives with a bang

	SNEHA KHANWALKAR

Pancham Da would indeed be proud and be blessing from the heaven Sneha Khanwalkar for her passion for collecting as diverse kind of sounds as can be possible and would also feel a sense of nostalgia as Sneha Khanwalkar, like Pancham Da does not have hesitation to travel to any part of the world to capture a sound. She has shown this commitment towards bringing as varied varieties of sound as could be possible on the silver screen through her oeuvre in both parts of the gangster movie GANGS OF WASSEYPUR. As a matter of fact both the parts of film combined together have also attained a unique distinction of being a film with maximum number of songs.

What has been the catalyst in the phenomenal success that Sneha Khanwalkar has achieved in her quest to position the Indian sound, Indian rendition, Indian mannerisms and Indian idioms in the songs that she has composed for GOW. As a matter of fact Sneha Khanwalkar’s quest for sounds with element of rustic have given a new lease of life to the Birha and associated song tradition from the Hindi heartland, as also the songs that are a part of the marriage ceremonies, e.g. electric piya. Obviously she has been helped in her quest by the lyricist Piyush Mishra and Varun Grover. Sneha’s growing up years in Gwalior would also have contributed to her quest to reposition the Indian songs and sounds as Gwalior is one of the centres that is a proponent of classical Indian music for eons.

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Pancham Da could bring in such diverse forms of sound as he used to travel, in the same manner Sneha Khanwalkar also travels widely and records and preserves sound from all the places where she travels. There is an anecdote about Pancham Da‘s quest for sound in BECAUSE HE IS: written by Meghna Gulzar where Pancham had dragged Gulzar to Lonavala to catch a particular variety of sound. Sneha Khanwalkar also discovered the sounds of African tribes settled in Yellapur, near Dharwad in North Karnataka, who had landed there more than 400 years ago.

The practitioners of sound and song even though they might have migrated from their place of origin eons ago continue to maintain the touch of the native place and same is seen in GOW where in the song ‘I am a hunter’, sung by Vedesh Sookoo, a second generation Caribbean, along with Rajneesh, Shyamu and Munna has a touch of native language of eastern UP in the rendition of the song.

In the same way the song ‘O Womaniya’ that she has composed brings about a sense of liberalism about sexuality oozing from their voice, a feature which may not have possible to capture if the professional singers may have been used by Sneha Khanwalkar. The Sound of Music that she is practicing surely is going to take the Indian film music to new heights.