Shankar Ehsaan Loy Musical musketeers in Bollywood

 

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy is the Indian famous music director, instrumentalist, composer and singer’s trio team in Bollywood.

Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa started their musical journey together in Mukul Anand's film Dus (1985). In Bollywood they mostly known by Shankar Ehsaan Loy(SEL) who are often considered to be "Amar Akbar Anthony" of the Bollywood music industry.

Still now, they have composed almost 50 sound tracts in five languages but mostly in Bollywood. They have composed many hits movie music like Mission Kashmir, Dil Chahta Hai, Kal Ho Naa Ho, Bunty Aur Babli, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Don: The Chase Begins Again, Salaam-e-Ishq, Taare Zameen Par, Rock On!!, Wake Up Sid, My Name Is Khan, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Raazi.  

Mainly, the trio won immense popularity after realizing Dil Chahta Hai. This movie’s songs earned wide critical success and positive response from audiences. Before they worked in many films music but they did not get any notable success. After that time the trio never looked back.

Recently, the trio announced on their Digital début with‘Bandish Bandits’ a classical musical project. Also, they are now working on Bunty Aur Babli 2, Prithviraj, Sam Bahadur and an untitled film of Avnish Barjatya. 

 Working on Hindi music industry for such long year, they created a different trend which was merged with the karnatic and Hindustani vocal tradition, Western rock and the electronic synthesizer. Before that time, Bollywood music composition was only based on classical Indian ragas.

Each members of the trio are experienced with different music talent. Shankar is well trained in Karnatic and Hindustani vocal tradition and Ehasaan is a guitarist who has also experiences in western and international music. On the other hand, Loy has a deep knowledge about fusion and the electronic synthesizer.

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s versatile music talent inspired the Hindi music industry to create some new tunes which combined with traditional music and popular western music. After Dil Chahta Hai films songs they showed the young audiences that Bollywood music could also be cool.   

Mainly, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy worked with the films produced by Excel Entertainment which founded by actor and director Farhan Akhtar and Rithesh Sidhwani and Karan Johar's Dharma Productions. Other director they have worked with often are Shaad Ali, Zoya Akhtar and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

Most of lyrics were written by Gulzer and Javed Akhtar and also Amitabh Bhattacharya and Prasoon Joshi’s.

This trio team won many Award including the National Film Award for Best Music Direction for the film Kal Ho Naa Ho in 2004. And also won three Filmfare awards for Bunty Aur Babli, Kal Ho Naa Ho, 2 States and three International Indian Film Academy Awards for Kal Ho Naa Ho, Bunty Aur Babli, My Name is Khan. In 2019, Shankar got the Padma Shri Award for his contribution to Film Music.

Besides Bollywood, this musical team involved with Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and English music. In 1998, they released their first music album ‘Breathless’ and worked for several jingles, signature tunes for Reliance and Aircel, and public awareness campaigns. In 2011, they composed the official anthem of ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 which won huge praise among youths.

I loved Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music. I think, who love to listen Bollywood music they surely like to hear Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s music too.

With me one interesting thing happened. when I first knew about Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. I thought, it was an individual name. After two and half years later, I found that was a misconception. Then I properly knew about them.