Over the last 10 years, as the space for songs has shrunk in Hindi films and background scores have became more important than ever, two me...
Over the last 10 years, as the space for songs has shrunk in Hindi films and background scores have became more important than ever, two men have been consistently doing some of the most interesting work in this area: Benedict Taylor and Naren Chandavarkar.
London-based Taylor, trained in the viola and the violin, has performed and produced classical, contemporary, and improvised music across Europe and beyond for years, while Mumbai-based Chandavarkar is a guitarist. Chandavarkar met Taylor in 2009, when Taylor was taking viola classes in Mumbai. When Anurag Kashyap asked Chandavarkar to score his 2010 film That Girl in Yellow Boots, he got Taylor on board.
Since then, their credits include Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus (2013), Avinash Arun’s Killa (2014), Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab (2016) and Sonchiriya (2019), Amit Masurkar’s Newton (2018), and Devanshu Kumar and Satyanshu Singh’s Chintu Ka Birthday (2020). They also scored for the web series Paatal Lok and Betaal. Their upcoming releases include Pushpendra Singh’s Laila Aur Satt Geet (2020) and Prashant Nair’s Tryst with Destiny (2020).
These productions have in common an independent streak and sombre subject matter, making Taylor and Chandavarkar’s scores occasionally veer towards the mournful.
“It would be lying to say we don’t enjoy that zone,” Taylor told Scroll.in. “I think it’s important to differentiate contemplative from mournful. I see great joy in some of the music...
