Veere Di Wedding’s promotional song Tareefan, which released two weeks ago, has got 4,16,38,891 views till Tuesday morning. The young composer of the song Qaran Mehta can’t hide his excitement over the tremendous response the track has received. “It’s a great feeling to be able to introduce my sound and brand of music with Tareefan. The song was composed on a flight from Mumbai to Delhi on my iPad,” says the young musician.
Was he aware that the song will be picturised on some of the beautiful leading ladies of Bollywood — Kareen Kapoor Khan, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, Swara Bhaskar and newbie Shikha Talsania? “Yes, I did. The brief I was given was that it’s going to be a promotional song. I had to make something in my style,” says the music producer and composer, lyricist and rapper. He adds that because the film was genre-defining, the song had to be a breakthrough and different from the clutter we usually hear. “The song required to have the same attitude that the film had,” he says, adding, “We didn’t want to come across as preachy, but wanted it to be cool. I wanted to make a song that I wanted to listen to. It’s a relatable number.”
This is for the first time that Qaran has collaborated with Badshah who has rapped and sung for the first time. The young musician says, “Initially, Badshah was only supposed to rap in the song but month before the song’s release, he heard the song and fell in love with it. He also wanted to sing it. Everyone was surprised but he pulled it off pretty well. Rest is history.”
Summing up his experience of working with the rapper, he says, “It’s been good working with him. It’s an untouched territory for him and I think the record is something that hasn’t been done before. The two have mixed pretty well together.”
Qaran, who has been DJ’ing across UK and Singapore, is known for his unique style of music, which he credits to the different genres of music he has listened to since a young age. “I had a lot of Indian music playing around me at home. I have also listened to the music from the ’90s, dancehall and afrobeat along with jaaz and blues. All those have come together in an organic way,” he explains.
Qaran has collaborated with both international artists and musicians from India. When it comes to comparing the different styles of working, he says there are certain styles which are familiar in India. “The trick for me is to find a way to collaborate between the styles I have grown up with, and implement music in such a way that it translates into the Indian market,” he says, adding, “The work culture and techniques are very different. Having said that, music is music. The way I do songs, there’s a very little difference between Indian and international records. That is one of the key goals — to bring music into the international market and also be able to make it a big hit here.”
With such diverse cultures and lifestyles, is it easy to compose music for the Indian set up with so much to get inspired from? Qaran replies, “Yes. I think the best thing here is that music has a history. So you have Carnatic or Hindustani classical music and those styles can seamlessly translate into Western genres. You just have to bring the two styles together.”
