The Maverick Behind DK Bose DK Bose DK

Music director Ram Sampath, who once successfully sued Rakesh and Rajesh Roshan for Rs 2 crore, tells it like it is

Bhaag DK Bose, the most edgy Hindi film song of 2011, was composed in a minute. But for that to happen, Ram Sampath had to live with the verse for a month. He was not even the first choice as music composer for Delhi Belly, which had been conceived as a single-song film. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy had almost been roped in for its music. But then Ram came in and spotted an opportunity for an interesting soundtrack. “You have to incubate and nurture compositions. Unlike popular perception, songs are born in an organic fashion because ideas are born like that,” he says. “You can’t say, ‘Boss, hit gaana chahiye’ or ‘Yaar, iss type ka gaana chahiye.’ That’s not how it works.”

Repeated over and over, “DK Bose” forms a Hindi expletive, and that’s what you hear when the song is sung. Ram insists it is not meant to offend anyone. “Honestly,” he says, “if it’s down to a swear word that people insinuate in the song, then it’s a swear word said differently. I have not intended to swear.”

According to Amitabh Bhattacharya, the lyricist, when he first heard Ram’s composition, he found it “funny and full of energy” (see ‘The Reluctant Songwriter’, 20 June 2011). “The truth is that it is an honest song,” says Ram, “and people have connected to the idea that the song has something more to say than just the swear word. Let’s credit the song with more intelligence.”

Ram entered the music scene when he was barely 17. “Those were the days of satellite explosion,” he recalls, “I was a college student looking for work, but most ad agencies I approached turned me out, saying, ‘You’re a kid, you belong in college.’ One of them, KS Chakravarthy, didn’t throw me out, and instead offered me work—on a commercial.”

Born into a middle-class family in Chembur, Mumbai, he had been obsessed with music since childhood, when his father TR Sampath, a print technologist, introduced him to singers Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Mehdi Hassan, Sabri Brothers and Palghat Mani Iyer. “There would be LPs all around my house. When I was around seven, my parents tell me I was obsessed with RD Burman’s music in Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin. As I grew up, I took to The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.”

An odd epiphany struck him when he heard the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. “I was watching the scene in which Jesus is carrying the cross, being whipped by soldiers, and suddenly I hear Nusrat saab (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) screaming his soul out. I was in tears. Pain and love in any language are the same. Music transcends religious, societal, economic and geographical systems. It was then that I realised the power of music.”

The Last Temptation… was also the start of a strange love affair with the music of Peter Gabriel, who Ram equates with Salman Rushdie. Both were to prove inspirations. “Like Rushdie, Gabriel opened up the world of music for me. It was through Gabriel that I got introduced to the likes of Paul Simon, Salif Keita and Ali Farka Touré, just as Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands made me appreciate Italo Calvino, Günter Grass and Graham Greene.” 

As a composer, he could invest in equipment only after he started earning. “Initially, buddies like Salim Merchant and Sanjay Maroo would loan me their gear. Then I got fed up of renting equipment and joined a studio.”

After establishing himself in advertising, Ram took to cinema and composed music for Khakee in 2004. However, he soon realised he wasn’t cut out for the “tabla-dholak zone” that typifies desi percussion. Disillusioned, he decided to stick to advertising. “I made up my mind not to work with people who didn’t share my views on films and music,” he says. He resurfaced in the Krazzy 4 controversy of 2008, taking the film’s producers Rakesh and Rajesh Roshan to court for lifting his tune. The Bombay High Court’s judgment awarding him Rs 2 crore set a well-noted precedent against plagiarism in Bollywood. “That incident taught me that there’s a very good reason why India is a great democracy and why we are a free nation. It reinstated my belief in the idea that you have to stand up for yourself. That’s what Manto and the Progressive Writers did, that’s what I did, and that’s what any man with self-respect would have done.”

He believes most artistes today have forgotten that they stand on the shoulders of giants. “We come from a very rich heritage of music. We must not forget that our forefathers were not conservatives, but bold and strong. We would be doing a disservice to their memory by turning puritanical. We don’t stand on the legacy of rip-offs, but on originality. Where have we lost that originality, that edge, that dhaar?” he muses.

Friend and singer Kailash Kher says Ram has that edge: “He thinks out-of-the-box. Most people have a method, he has none, and that’s why he is a unique artiste.”   In his own little way, Ram aspires to revive the respect for film music. “We have to make this place merit-based, demolish the mai-baap system [of patriarchal patronage],” he says, “And merit is the only thing that counts. When it came to the Oscars, finally it took quality-conscious people like AR Rahman and Gulzar saab to win for us. That’s how I see life, which I think has its own rewards for those who work with achchi neeyat (integrity of intent).”

Of his contemporaries, Ram looks up to Rahman as a “a guiding force who has beautifully married Western slickness with Indian sound”.  And now with the soundtrack of Delhi Belly having done well, Ram feels it grants him an opportunity to make music his own way. “Film music is headed well now. It is reaching out to the soul. We are slowly getting back to how we started out. Our songs are once again expressing concerns of the times… We are becoming aware of our legacies,” says Ram.

Music, according to him, should always have its origin in one’s own culture. “I have a strong affinity for rooted music. Every land has its own funk, and as artistes, one should look within,” he says. “Today, we fail to link our life experiences with our work. I am a believer in soul music. Whether it is rock, pop or qawwali, the genre makes no difference so long as you go for the soul. I am not too concerned with the form or texture, but with musical connections. I am interested in the stitches more than the cloth. ”

Yet, Ram’s partner and producer Sona Mohapatra, who’s worked closely with him for over a decade, says he can be painful to work with it. She says, “He likes doing things his way. Once, on an album, he suddenly wanted to change something at the last minute, but we couldn’t afford it since we had already spent enough time on it. I felt like breaking glass over my head.” She also calls him an “encyclopaedia” for his expansive range of interests that includes a fascination for painters Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso. Lately, he’s been trying to learn Urdu from Javed Akhtar, with little success. “Javed saab insists I will learn Urdu in 15 days. Those 15 days are long gone, but the struggle is still on,” he says, bursting out in a laugh.

“Knowing Ram, he might just pick up Urdu in 15 days,” says composer Rajat Dholakia, a long-time friend, “He has this incredible inquisitiveness about things. Talk about football, and he’ll have something to say about that too. Yet, what he’s most comfortable at is music. Mark my words, you are going to see—and fortunately hear—him more often now.”

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