Sonar Pahar touches the right chord with soulful music

Parambrata Chattopadhyay’s next directorial, Sonar Pahar, has tried to touch the right chords with the audience through its simple yet soulful music. Composed by Neel Dutt, the two songs in the film — Kothao Amar Hariye Jawoar Nei Mana, a Rabindrasangeet, and another original — have been beautifully composed, using bare minimum sound. A few instruments like bass guitar and electric guitar have been used along with mandolin.
“The trend in scoring background music in films around the world shows an increasing inclination towards simple and minimalistic use of sound.In Sonar Pahar, which is a film high on emotional content yet not melodramatic, I’ve explored one particular instrument to its all possible depths. Iman Chakraborty has sung the Tagore song while the original is sung by Anupam Roy and written by Anindya Chattopadhyay,” shared Neel Dutt, who has scored the music for the film.
While remixing Tagore songs accompanied by a lot of acoustic music is quite common in films these days, Neel has refrained from making it loud. He wanted to break out of the use of piano, drums and guitar, and introduce different instruments. “The film deals with friendship, joy and niggles of relationships. There’s also a sense of fantasy in it. I tried to highlight these aspects with the music in a subtle way. Both Param and I wanted to keep it simple and realistic while using the fantasy element carefully. The sound arrangement, music, vocals and actors’ voices — all came into play,” added Neel.