Dhruv Ghanekar’s songs are hard to categorise. ‘Fusion’ is a word that is often used to describe his work. The music composer and multi-instrumentalist from Mumbai, who is “quite comfortable” with blending Hindustani classical music and hip-hop, or orchestral music and alternative rock, does not care much for categories or genres either.
The music video of Summertime Rocks, a track by Ghanekar and Ashutosh Phatak, featuring Kailash Kher, was released on YouTube last week. The animation features dogs grooving with guitars; fish swimming around rainbows; buildings half submerged in sand with camels walking on it and caricature figures of the three musicians driving around the surreal landscape in a bright pink car.
“It is irreverent and fun”, as Ghanekar puts it. “It was written in one day and captures the spirit of the times”, Ghanekar says about the song which was originally recorded over a decade ago as part of their album Smoke Signals. It is a delightful mix of rock and roll and folk, with Kailash Kher’s resonant vocals in Hindi and the duo’s subdued chorus in English.
Singer Kailash Kher“Kailash was new in Mumbai. We were all starting our careers. The video and the song are reminiscent of that time in our lives. It has a sense of freedom, exhilaration, and innocence,” says Ghanekar. The video has a lot of references to Mumbai, from its club culture to its famous boulevards and buildings.
“The city has always been a space that is both strange and inspiring.” Ghanekar grew up listening to Bollywood songs and classical music along with Michael Jackson and The Beatles. “I studied Hindustani classical music when I was young. It is my grounding and it influences the way I approach music. Later I went to the US and learned jazz and musical arrangement there. I can straddle both grounds comfortably. It comes naturally,” says the musician.
Ghanekar has had a prolific career as a musician who has worked across movies, advertisements and independent projects. His big break as a music composer came with the 1998 Kaizad Gustad-directed cult comedy film, Bombay Boys. He went on to collaborate with some of the biggest names in Indian music today, including Ustad Zakir Hussain and AR Rahman.
“I need to do different things. It is almost a necessity for me, ” says Ghanekar, of the various hats he has worn as a musician. He composed the soundtrack for the Netflix series Choona which was released in September. “The good thing about working on a web series for platforms like Netflix”, Ghanekar says, “is that it has a global audience from day one”.
Though he likes swapping roles, he has struggled to find a “happy middle space” between his commercial and independent projects. “I love the insane deadlines in advertising and the big canvases that movies offer. But independent music gives you freedom,” he quipped. Ghanekar has seen the indie music scene in the country grow up and mature.
“Last year, indie music superseded film music in terms of streaming,” he says, adding, “The hip-hop scene is huge now. So is folk music from different parts of the country. People have access to all kinds of music. The music scene in India today is very much like a Bhelpuri.” According to the singer, “Music has been more or less democratised. You can be a musician as well as the CEO of your own record label.
You can be your own producer, distributer and promoter. But it is an enormous amount of responsibility and young musicians starting out often find it overwhelming.” Ghanekar has an advice for all the young artists out there: “The most important thing is to start. You have to do it and fail. Then do it again.” Ghanekar is, true to type, currently working on the music for Mumbai Star, a Broadway-style musical that fuses Kathak and K-pop and also Indian folk music and hip-hop.
