You can listen to the songs here, and better still, join the mailing list to get free mp3s. 🙂Zakir Hussain has been very choosy about the films that he has composed music for. So far he has given music to three films and the fourth one is “For Real“. A cross-over film directed by Sona Jain. The movie is about a a little girl and her adventures. Here is the trailer.
An interesting thing about this soundtrack is that it doesn’t contain any tabla beats. Hussain saheb’s decision to relinquish his favorite instrument must have been driven by the demands of the movie. But it still puzzles me why he had to do so, as the movie is also set in India. May be, I will have to watch the movie to find the answer for this question.
The predominant theme is that of the album is that of smooth jazz, with sax and bass guitar used in abundance. Again I find it suprising that there are no world music elements in the soundtrack. But then, one can always argue why a cross-over film should always have a cross-over elements in it’s musical department. The song “Plastic Doll” does have some kind of South Indian beats in the middle and that’s about it, so much for all those who wanted to hear Tabla in this OST 🙂
Zakir Hussain himself said, in a recent interview, that working in films is a task. I believe what he was probably hinting at the restrictions the a film’s OST imposes on the composing skills of a musician.
Even though beautifully executed and probably fitting neatly into the larger scheme of the film (I need to watch the film first to be sure of that), this album is strictly for the fans of Zakir Hussain.
Music Aloud Rating: I don’t consider myself fit enough to be rating a Zakir Hussain album!
Recommended Tracks: Puppeteer (Instrumental), Plastic Doll (Instrumental)
Zakir Hussain recently performed with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyar at NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. Here is the link where you can watch the video and even download the mp3.
