Sneha Khanwalkar: The Fresh Wave
Sneha Khanwalkar is the 31 years old music composer of superhit albums like Khoobsurat, Gangs of Wassepur 1 and 2 and Oye Lucky Lucky Oye. She has also given music to specific tracks of films like Sarkar Raj, Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Youngistaan.
A woman Composer is rare in the Hindi film industry, however Sneha is slowly rising to fame and making a mark, which is commendable.
She is a Marathi by birth but brought up in Indore and her maternal family has a musical background, belonging to the Gwalior Gharana, which is from where she learnt classical music and thus, her journey in the industry began.
She is different from other music composers as she is has produced unconventional music. She is research oriented and loves to go for details. For instance, for the composition of songs of the album of 2008 film Oye Lucky Lucky Oye she put in extra effort travelling across North India and especially around Haryana and simultaneously created tracks which she blended with a distinct Haryanvi music flavour.
For her recent album Khoobsurat she has been on a high. Engine Ki Seeti, which is adopted from a Rajasthani folk song and Maa Ka Phone have been the top trends on music charts and other songs from the album like Baal Khade, Preet and Naina have also done great and been appreciated for being unusual and unique. For Engine ki Seeti too Sneha travelled to Rajasthan and met Ikram Rajasthani who is the original composer of the folk song Anjan Ki Seeti.
In the earlier stage of her career she gave music to not so popular films like Kal- Yesterday and Tomorrow and Go.
Most of her songs are eccentric be it Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Bihar Ke Lala, O Womaniya, Hunter, Oye Lucky, Superchor or the latest Engine Ki seeti, Baal Khade and Maa Ka Phone.
Taking about her inspiration recently to a local daily she said, “I idolise whoever is original. AR Rahman opened my ears to music”.
While our music industry is rapidly changing, for somethings good and some not so good, Sneha’s growth is certainly a good one. Her past ventures as well as her latest one has brought in a fresh wave of energy and grace to the music of Bollywood films and everybody is grooving to her tunes.
The music composers are not as much credited however they do undergo a lot of thinking, research, hard work, takes and retake, rigorous recording sessions and only then does a good song comes out. With young talents like Sneha the whole process too is undergoing a change, a different sort of research, more youthful energy, much fun and much experimentation is being put to new creations.
In an industry where when you sit down listing successful music directors you get only names of men. Sneha is a new ray of hope as she is one of the few women who will make it to that list. We shall hope for some more extraordinary mainstream film compositions from her after Khoobsurat and also that she inspires the many aspiring young ladies to step up and not fear it being a male dominated industry space. Kudos Sneha !
