Raashi Kulkarni Talks Bollywood-Inspired Score in “A Nice Indian Boy”
A Nice Indian Boy is a return to the best era of romantic comedies. The film centers on perpetually single doctor, Naveen (Karan Soni), who crosses paths with freelance photographer, Jay (Jonathan Groff). Jay is white, but was adopted by an older Indian couple. As Jay and Naveen fall in love, Naveen braces himself for how his family will react when he finally brings home a nice Indian boy.
One of the through lines of the film is a shared love of Bollywood films. A Nice Indian Boy’s composer, Raashi Kulkarni, also has that love of Bollywood music. Kulkarni sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss the beginning of her composing career, her second collaboration with director Roshan Sethi, and the best part about Indian weddings. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Beyond the Cinerama Dome: With composers, I'm always fascinated that you made the leap from learning music and then choosing composing for film. Were movies another thing that you've loved for the entirety of your life?
Raashi Kulkarni: Oh, yes! I started taking piano lessons when I was seven years old, and my teachers always instilled the importance of storytelling. I think I naturally gravitated to film and TV just because the idea of storytelling was so important. I also grew up on Bollywood movies and it's all about song and dance. It was always something I wanted to do. I just didn't know how I would be able to get into this industry, in this field. It's always something that I've gravitated toward.
My sister, who’s a musician, has played music since forever, but isn’t a movie person. I cannot get her to go to a movie unless it's a movie musical. I think I’m learning that she might be the exception.
As a pianist, I'm always thinking about the story when I'm performing. It doesn't matter what medium you're in, whether it's film or TV or if you're playing live, you're sharing these emotions. Whether it's in real time or across the screen. Film and TV are such beautiful ways to share your art because it can reach people on the other side of the world. I've always loved film scores and film music.
A Nice Indian Boy is your second time working with Roshan Sethi. Now that you've done two projects together, what's this working relationship like? Do you have a shorthand?
He's the best. I feel very fortunate to work with Roshan because he's always thinking about music quite early on. When we were wrapping our first film together, World’s Best, which is on Disney+, he already knew that he wanted to bring me on for A Nice Indian Boy.
c: Betsy Newman
I got hired during pre-production. I was able to read the script and start sending musical ideas to him very early on. In fact, my music ended up being played on set. It kind of informed the sound of the film. They actually cut a montage sequence to the music I had written. It was the opposite of how you normally score a picture.
I want to continue working with him. He's such a great director, such a great collaborator. We do have a shorthand where it's just easy to know if something will work, if something won't work. I hope this is the beginning of many, many collaborations with Roshan.
What was it like doing the film this way? Was this your first time being brought on so early that you had such a hand in the development of the sound?
Luckily, there have been a few films I've worked on where I was brought on in pre-production. In this film, it was important for me to be brought on early. There’s a dance number at the very end of the film, and I actually arranged that musical number. So from the script, I had to basically calculate how many bars and beats everything would be, because certain things had to be hit in the script to match what was happening in the song.
The song also had to be less than two minutes. It was very mathematical to figure out like, okay, this is happening in the script, how do I translate that to music? How will that make musical sense? Because it's a Bollywood pop number, we wanted to add strings and Indian drums to make it cohesive with the rest of the film.
We didn't end the film with the score, we ended it with the song. Because I was brought on early, I was able to arrange this number, add the strings, add the Indian drums, make it feel like this cohesive thing.
I love being brought on early. It gives me time to think, send ideas, and have a back-and-forth. With other projects, they'll bring on the composer at the end of the process. I’ve experienced a mix, I think, but with Roshan, I've been lucky to be brought on very early.
Courtesy of Levantine Films
You mentioned how you grew up on Bollywood movies, which is the same for the characters in the film. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) is such a huge part of the film and the emotional development for the relationship. How did you musically incorporate the song from that film they keep referring back to, while also modernizing it and making it relevant for the film?
That's such a great question. DDLJ came out in 1995, and it's a film that has stood the test of time. People still watch it 30 years later. In fact, "Tujhe Dekha Toh," which is the scene that we see in the film, was the first song I ever learned how to play by ear, when I was six years old. It felt very full circle for me to now work on this film where I'm creating these themes that kind of lean into the bigness of love.
Back to your question. There was this want to lean into the bigness of love, which is why it’s the main love theme we have for Jonathan Groff’s character, Jay, and Karan Soni’s character, Naveen. It's very thematic. When you hear it in the wedding sequence, I had gotten an amazing vocalist, Devin Velez, to sing those vocals.
I think that by incorporating the vocals in there we were able to create this really thematic material. Hopefully it matched the bigness of love that we were referring to with Bollywood.
Absolutely. The other side of the film, when it's not these sweeping romantic moments, is so funny. I've heard from other composers that comedy is difficult to score. Do you find that to be true as well?
I would say comedy is arguably the most difficult genre of music to score because it's all about timing. You never want to hit things that are too on-the-nose. In this film, we intentionally were hitting things in a way that was leaning in because the film and score are a love letter to Bollywood.
Roshan actually had wanted the film to incorporate Indian percussion for the comedic moments. That was an active choice. It's interesting too, because with an instrument like the Tabla, the sounds you can create with the Tabla do kind of sound comedic. We ended up using it for several of those moments. It also left space for the romantic themes, because I had three specific motifs for Naveen’s journey.
It was kind of nice to have the juxtaposition of very thematic material versus just percussion for the comedic moments.
Courtesy of Levantine Films
I got to interview Roshan, Zarna [Garg], and Karan over the weekend. One of the main things they talked about was the idea of how specificity makes something universal. We talked about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I'm Greek. It's one of my favorite movies. In A Nice Indian Boy, it felt like I was watching my family in an alternate dimension. Can you talk about how that idea of specificity relates to the universality in the score you've created?
I so agree with you. I truly believe that specificity in storytelling yields universality. I'm not Greek, but I felt so connected to those characters. I think the reason is because those characters were completely authentic. I feel the same way in A Nice Indian Boy, where the characters are completely authentic. They're grappling with the duality of their identity.
I think being Indian-American also allowed me to tap into both sides of my identity. Indian and American. I think when you create art that is completely authentic, it's going to resonate with people regardless of their background.
My last question is another one I asked that group. What’s the best part of an Indian wedding?
Oh my goodness. I mean, Indian weddings go on for days. One day there’s something called the Sangeet, where both of the families and friends come together and gather. You all just sing and dance. It's meant to be a celebration in prep for the wedding.
Then the wedding happens, and they have something called the baraat where the guy, or in this case, one side, comes to meet the other family and it's this big entrance. Lots of music, lots of dancing. The ceremony itself is always very beautiful, depending on what kind of ceremony it is. As a bridesmaid, I've been in Sikh weddings and I've been in Hindu weddings.
I think what we did for my sister's wedding, which I loved, was really fun. She had a Catholic ceremony and a Hindu ceremony because my brother-in-law is Catholic. In Hindu tradition, there’s this moment where we had to steal the groom's shoes before the ceremony. If you steal them, the only way he can get his shoes back is if he pays us. You go into this banter of like, no, no, he'll give us this much and we're like, no, that's not enough.
There are so many things that I love. Indian weddings are colorful. They're just filled with music, love, and dancing. All the best things.
And that's exactly what A Nice Indian Boy feels like.
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