Satyajit Ray at 100: The musical genius behind… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Satya­jit Ray at 100: The musi­cal genius behind the auteur

02 May 2021

Words by Arun AK

A person sitting at a Roland electronic keyboard in a cluttered room, surrounded by bookshelves and other electronic equipment.
A person sitting at a Roland electronic keyboard in a cluttered room, surrounded by bookshelves and other electronic equipment.
The famed film­mak­er was also a gift­ed com­pos­er, often blend­ing Indi­an and West­ern clas­si­cal music.

To label Satya­jit Ray mere­ly an auteur’ would be to put a cap on his mul­ti­tude of tal­ents. A giant of world cin­e­ma (fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly; he stood at six feet four), he fre­quent­ly indulged in fic­tion writ­ing, film crit­i­cism, pub­lish­ing, cal­lig­ra­phy, illus­tra­tion, graph­ic design and music com­po­si­tion. In fact, Ray came up with the idea for his first film, 1955’s Pather Pan­chali, when he was illus­trat­ing a children’s book of the same name.

He is known pre­dom­i­nant­ly as an image-dri­ven sto­ry­teller due to his phe­nom­e­nal scene com­po­si­tions and owes much of this grace to his sto­ry­board cre­ation phase. Ray spent a huge amount of time paint­ing his scenes, sketch­ing var­i­ous com­po­nents, and com­ing up with char­ac­ter and cos­tume designs. Even the posters he cre­at­ed for his films show­cased his prowess as a graph­ic artist.

But music was Ray’s first love. Raised in a fam­i­ly of musi­cians on his mother’s side, he was exposed to Indi­an and West­ern clas­si­cal music from a young age. He played sev­er­al instru­ments and had a keen sense of rhythm. Dur­ing the ear­ly part of his career Ray’s films were scored by some of India’s great­est clas­si­cal mae­stros; it was with 1961’s Teen Kanya that Satya­jit Ray the music direc­tor’ was born.

One of the rea­sons for plung­ing him­self into music com­po­si­tion was the unavail­abil­i­ty of his pre­ferred musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tors, owing to their busy tour­ing sched­ules. But the pri­ma­ry rea­son was, by his own admis­sion: I do not work with pro­fes­sion­al com­posers any­more because I get too many musi­cal ideas of my own, and com­posers, under­stand­ably enough, resent being guid­ed too much.”

The com­posers Ray was allud­ing to were Vilay­at Khan and Ali Akbar Khan, who scored the music for Jal­saghar and Devi, respec­tive­ly. Both com­posers accused Ray of exces­sive inter­fer­ence, and Ali Akbar Khan even expressed doubts over the director’s knowl­edge of Indi­an clas­si­cal music. How­ev­er, Ravi Shankar, who com­posed the music for The Apu Tril­o­gy and Paras Pathar, fre­quent­ly stat­ed that Ray was the great­est film­mak­er he had worked with. Per­haps, by doing the music for all his films post-Devi and not rely­ing on any oth­er com­pos­er, Ray was try­ing to prove a point.

The iconic Charus Theme from 1964s Charulata features repeatedly in Wes Andersons The Darjeeling Limited.

Ray believed that music should be con­gru­ous with the sen­si­bil­i­ty of a film. There­fore, he would start work­ing on the music at the script stage, ensur­ing that the sto­ry and score evolved in tan­dem. He would keep notes of his musi­cal ideas as they devel­oped, care­ful­ly writ­ing down the music either in Indi­an or West­ern nota­tion depend­ing on the musi­cians he was work­ing with. Ini­tial­ly he com­posed his scores on the piano; for the back­ground music he gen­er­al­ly used vio­lins, cel­los, dou­ble bass gui­tars and an assort­ment of Indi­an per­cus­sion instru­ments. Start­ing with Teen Kanya, every Ray film had theme music which would often under­line the cen­tral narrative.

The use of music in Ray’s films was born out of neces­si­ty. He was an admir­er of Euro­pean film­mak­ers like Ing­mar Bergman, who used music spar­ing­ly in his films. If I were the only audi­ence, I wouldn’t be using music. I have always felt that music is an extra­ne­ous ele­ment, that one should be able to do with­out it, express one­self with­out it,” he said. In the 1984 doc­u­men­tary Music of Satya­jit Ray, the direc­tor explains, We [in India] still use music part­ly out of con­sid­er­a­tion for the audi­ence. [Oth­er­wise] the less intel­li­gent audi­ence would not be able to com­pre­hend the mood.”

Ray’s biggest depar­ture in terms of musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty came in 1969’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Up until then he had used music dis­creet­ly. Cater­ing to younger view­ers, the film fea­tures nine songs with music and lyrics writ­ten by Ray. In 1984’s Ghar Bhaire, Ray exper­i­ment­ed with mix­ing West­ern and Indi­an music ele­ments to com­ple­ment the influ­ence of both cul­tures on the film’s char­ac­ters. This was the first time that Indi­an and West­ern clas­si­cal music had been fused in Indi­an cin­e­ma. In his final film, 1991’s Agan­tuk, Ray even lent his bari­tone to the score, singing a few lines.

Ray was sought after by many film­mak­ers for his musi­cian­ship. He scored many doc­u­men­taries and fea­ture films, includ­ing James Ivory’s Shake­speare Wal­lah in 1965. Wes Ander­son used sev­er­al of Ray’s orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions in The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. The icon­ic Charu’s Theme’ from 1964’s Charu­la­ta fea­tures repeat­ed­ly in Anderson’s film. French com­pos­er Mau­rice Jarre once called Ray’s music haunt­ing and soul-stir­ring at the same time. It’s no won­der his films and his music con­tin­ue to enchant audiences.

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