Hope Aur Hum strikes a cord

Shaan yodeling in Aye Zindagi, Sonu Nigam completely unrecognizable in Aache Bacche Rote Nahin, and duo Bhoomi Triveni and Suraj Jagan adding a smack of acapella and choral feel in the title track Hope Aur Hum, are few surprises the three soundtracks of  director  Sudip Bandyopadhyay's latest film Hope Aur Hum throw your way... To rightly depict the poignant moments to happy countryside life in this highly emotional movie, musician Rupert Fernandes composed and produced these melodious tunes, including the background score, purely on guitar.

“The film has a very personal tone and I didn't want to disturb that. So, I kept the instrumentation to a minimum for an organic, natural sound. I felt that the sounds of the guitar would be the best to germinate the melody of each scene and its moods in the movie,” says the seasoned guitarist, about the songs penned by Saurabh Dikshit. Hope Aur Hum that stars Naseeruddin Shah, Sonali Kulkarni, Aamir Bashir, Kabir Shaikh and Naveen Kasturia, is about three generations of the Srivastava family grappling with their own life's challenges.

Each one of the three songs has a different mood which Fernandes had to replicate through sound. Aye zindagi, Khelenge phir kabhi, Aaj mood nahin hain... is about one being ready to face life's challenges. Aache bacche rote nahin, Kwaab sacche hote nahin (your dreams don't always come true but good children don't cry) is a sad, melancholic song that has Shah watching his beloved antique, yet dysfunctional photocopy machine being taken away, with a heavy heart. The title track Hope Aur Hum, is a happy, dance number.

So Fernandes began to compose on an acoustic guitar, but soon realised that he had to use electric sound to further fuel his experiments with the stringed instrument. For instance, throughout the film, Shah's grandson (played by Shaikh) is shown intrigued by a black box. A very dark musical score was required to highlight the suspense in those scenes. “So I used this device called the ebow, on the electric and bass guitar, which when held over the pickup, can sustain whatever note you're playing for long.” For the tongue-in-cheek title-track, he produced a kick drum sound by hitting the body of the guitar for a percussive sound, and 'plectrum scraping' on the strings “for a dose of wackiness”. 

Fernandes says it was world music influences in the movie. So when the mother (Kulkarni) tells her young boy (Shaikh) to listen to jazz music when low and puts on a Brazilian jazz track on the gramophone, that tune is actually a Fernandes original.

Apart from only using the guitar, Fernandes also had the singers step out of their comfort zone. Sonu Nigam's usually easy-to-identify voice is something both singer and composer wanted to go away from. “I wrote Aache Bacche... in a key starts at a register lower than what Sonu normally sings in and later goes higher than what he pitches at. And Sonu had ​no inhibitions... He just went for it.” About Shaan's country music stint, he says, “I just asked Shaan to hum the tune and he interpreted it by yodeling towards the end of the song.”

While this is the first film Fernandes has composed the entire music for, he has previously worked on background scores for Bollywood composers AR Rahman, Anu Malik, Jatin-Lalit. He's also composed for a few Tamil movies and jingles, including the latest Vodafone and Dubai Tourism ads.