Rahman's idea for ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ was to merge western musicals, Punjabi culture

MUMBAI — Oscar and Grammy-winning music composer A. R. Rahman, who next has the biopic ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ waiting in the wings, shared the core idea behind the film’s music with IANS.

The composer shared the idea was to bring together Western musicals and Punjabi culture. The story of ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ is told musically but at the same time, it is very rooted and feels quite rustic.

The composer told IANS: “In this case, there is a culture. So you can't do stuff which is too much out of the box. We decided to take the formula of western musicals where people sing, dance and there is a narrative going forward musically. As much as the information is being fed to the audience at the same time it is very much enjoyable.”

He further mentioned: “The idea then struck to us that what if we merge the Punjabi culture with the western musical. So we designed the songs keeping them very rooted with rhythm changes and the time signature changes but at the same time they were designed in the way of a Broadway musical.”

‘Amar Singh Chamkila’ stars Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra in the lead, and is set to drop on Netflix on April 12.