By Rafay Mahmood

Karachi: The original score designed for NAPA’s Beech Bahaar Ki Raat Ka Sapna composed by Nafees Ahmed and Arshad Mehmood was not very convincing for the masses and could not add much to the play’s brilliance but still making an original for a Shakespearean musical is not an easy task.

While speaking to The News, renowned sitar player Ustad Nafees Ahmed, head of the Music Department at NAPA, recalled the hard work that went into developing the music composition of the play.

“All of us had to be very careful about the play because Shakespearean drama is very multi-layered so the thought that went behind the decision of type of music was driven by one factor and that was to keep central emotion and theme of the play same and play around with the era because originally the play is based on the Elizabethan era but we gave it our own local touch,” Ustaad Nafees Ahmed told said.

Explaining the creative process, Nafees said that it all started with reading of the script an marking the sequences where music was really required. This was done because despite being a musical, where a lot of lines were written in a poetic manner, director Khalid Ahmed and composers Arshad Mehmood and Nafees himself decided to keep music only for selective places.

Explaining the multiplicity of the emotions involved in the play, Nafees said that “the play has a lot of different emotions and themes involved in it – from hope to tragedy, envy to happiness and so on. To support such a play with music was a difficult task and we tried our best to do justice with the script by providing the right blend of music”.

As far as the instrumentation of the play is concerned, Nafees believed that the Elizabethan era can be compared to local folk music to some extent in terms of local relevance and that is how the choice of instruments was made. For instance, guitar was replaced with sitar, the Western flute with the local flute and so on.

The music was supposed to be played live but due to the lack of space at the Arts Council indoor auditorium, the live orchestra could not be arranged. Alternatively, the music score has been recorded while the songs will be sung live by the actors who are part of the play.

There are two to four-minute songs and the rest are musical pieces that keep on appearing at different parts during the play. Arshad Mehmood and Ustad Nafees Ahmed have composed the music whereas Nafees has also taken up the additional responsibility of playing sitar and keyboard.
Source: The News
Date:4/3/2010