Grammy winning music composer Sam Slater has been getting great feedback for giving music to web series, The Railway Men, and that is motivating him to explore the sounds of Indian industry more as he confesses he has always been intrigued by it.
Earlier, Slater was the music producer of Chernobyl and gave the background score of the film, Joker. Shiv Rawail’s The Railway Men, starring Kay Kay Menon, R Madhvan and Babil Khan, was the first Indian production he got associated with.
“Ever since the project was released, I have had a few really nice messages. It’s rare that anyone notices music in a series. So, it is lovely when people write to you and say that they, they noticed it, or they were moved by it,” Slater tells us over a virtual call.
The British composer adds, “I love working with people from different places. I spend my life working with people from different places. I have been to India many times in the last 10 years and have worked with musicians before. But I had never worked on an Indian production before”.
“Through the process, I learnt a lot about how people grew up, and started falling in love with Indian culture. So, I am very open to interesting collaborations and don't mind where they come from. If anything, I would rather not work in England or Germany, because I know those places very well. I like learning about new places”, he says.
{{/usCountry}}“Through the process, I learnt a lot about how people grew up, and started falling in love with Indian culture. So, I am very open to interesting collaborations and don't mind where they come from. If anything, I would rather not work in England or Germany, because I know those places very well. I like learning about new places”, he says.
{{/usCountry}}Over the last 10 years, he has found new things to love about India, and Ravanahatha instrument is one such thing.
“It is from Rajasthan. I like that it's a folk tradition, and people are so skilled at playing it. It sounds like punk rock. It's very shouty and, but it has this almost ghostly echo that hangs off the back of it. It is really stunning. And Indian classical tradition is absolutely mind blowing. It's beautiful how virtuosic people really become with their instruments. I have tried to learn the tabla, and I'm useless at it. And I played drums my whole life. I can play the drums. But tabla is a whole different language,” he says, which gets him excited about working more in India.