The Merchants of Mumbai

Music composers Salim and Sulaiman Merchant will be seen in Shantanu & Nikhil ensembles at the Emmy Awards to be held on September 20 in Hollywood. Nikhil Mehra confirms, “Salim is wearing a black textured sherwani and Sulaiman will be wearing a combat blue sherwani. We choose sherwanis because it best reflected their musical styling — Sufi and culturally rich music. We have designed short sherwanis with cigarette pants which brings out the essence of their music and personality.”

The duo seem to be getting a lot of international recognition lately. After being nominated for the Emmy Awards for their song We like Being Small for Nickelodeon USA’s popular show Wonder Pets, they created the complete score for the episode Save the Bengal Tiger. The two have won in the best music category at the Syracuse Film Festival in New York too.

This time, the award was for the music of the movie Fashion which was nominated in every awards show in India, but lost out to AR Rahman’s Jodha Akbar and Jane Tu Ya Jane Na. The Syracuse Film Festival where Fashion was screened outdid some formidable contenders like Debbie Wiseman (England) nominated for The Hide and the Young Rock Choi (Korea) for How To Live on Earth. Salim and Sulaiman have been looking at making their mark in the west  — a place they believe has great scope for interesting work. “Yes, I had been in the US recently which was a delayed honeymoon trip combined with work. It’s not about looking for work, but about meeting more people and making our presence felt there,” says Sulaiman.