For a Carnatic musician to get an Oscar nomination is a rare phenomenon but as Bombay Jayashri herself explains, “music is without boundaries”. Her nomination for the lyrics of Pi’s Lullaby from the acclaimed Life of Pi, much of it shot in Puducherry and Kerala’s Munnar, keeps alive the Chennai connection to Hollywood’s biggest showpiece ceremony.
A.R. Rahman was the first Indian musician to get the coveted honour for Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle, the British director who went on to win even greater acclaim after devising the London Olympics’ stunning opening last summer. Rahman’s twin win at the 2009 Oscars represented the biggest breakthrough for Indian music as well as the Indian film industry.
That Indian music and musicians are going global is a grand achievement even if Pandit Ravi Shankar had sowed the seeds long ago by lending soulful notes from his sitar to the Beatles’ songs. Jayashri, better known for her devotional kritis in the best classical traditions of her art, in which she has been compared to the greats of Carnatic music, made the easy crossover to films with her hit song Vasigara years ago. Now she goes further in trying to spread the message of how music can bring alive visuals in movies. “Words can fail, or words are not required, or cannot so much capture what a strain of melody can,” she says. It’s fair to conclude that Indian musicians have come a long way since then, and the “Indianisation” of Hollywood has helped considerably.