Jamal Rahman on working on Baaji

Jamal Rahman, a savvy artist, sound designer and audio engineer is a man who can do a lot with music. He reveals his reasons for saying yes to Baaji.

Instep: Having seen the effective Baaji trailer, it must be asked - is the music yours or from one of the songs that you did or didn’t do for the film?

Jamal Rahman (JR): No, the previously released teaser had my music, but the trailer was not done by me. It has background scoring and sound design by Kashaan Admani and OSTs by Taha Malik and Zeb Bangash.

Instep: How did you write the music for Baaji score?

(JR): My process has changed since scoring for Manto and Oye Kuch Ker Guzar. With Manto, I wrote the score as a progression that ran in parallel to the film and so every scene (and also every story enacted in the film) had its own unique piece of music, though there was an underlying mood and idea that tied it all together.

With Oye Kuch Ker Guzar, the film had some repeating themes for certain scenes and for others, I wrote unique passages. But my approach to scoring for Baaji has evolved dramatically, in that I have written several themes for some of the main characters that carry with them a certain emotion or mood associated with the role of that character with regards to the plot.

From the get-go, there is one main theme introduced in the very beginning that evokes a sense of foreboding, and as the story progresses, the theme evolves and becomes more complex and encompasses the pathos of these intertwined characters.

I composed most of the themes before I received the rough cut of the film, based on reading the script and my conversations with Saqib about the general aesthetic he was going for. Once the cut was finalized, I began fleshing out each of the themes over the story and mapping each ones evolution in parallel to the story. At this point, I also recruited Shamsher Rana to assist me getting the project done on time. He was responsible for most of the diagetic music and helped bring some of my compositions to completion.

I wanted the overall vibe of the score to be mostly ambient and minimal, but with the more dramatic scenes, a more layered and full approach was used, thus allowing for more dynamics throughout the music.

Instep: What were some of your influences?

(JR): I try to keep my influences as eclectic as possible. In preparation for Baaji, I was listening to scores by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network and Girl With a Dragon Tattoo), Ramin Djawadi (Game of Thrones, Westworld) and Hans Zimmer (Inception). Though the score has its own unique tone and sounds nothing like the above works, some of the techniques used by these world-class composers inspired and informed my work.

Instep: Why did Baaji appeal to you?

(JR): I had wanted to work with Saqib Malik since after Manto and even approached him several times over the course of the last few years. I’d been an admirer of his music video work, especially ‘Khamaaj’ for Fuzon and ‘Aitebaar’ for Zeb and Haniya. But we hadn’t been in touch for a while when out of the blue, he called and said that his feature film project was moving ahead and if I wanted to be a part of it. I hadn’t heard anything about the film but was already onboard. We met a short while later and he gave me the synopsis of the film and his overall vision for the project. The rest, as they say, is history.