Aashish Rego is probably the most prolific and popular music composer in the Indian television industry with 130 shows to his credit. Here’s engaging in an interesting tete-e-tete with the man himself.
Aashish Rego
He’s a well-known name on the Indian television circuit. His compositions and background scores are well-received by the audiences making him the go-to composer for production houses. In conversation…
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Q. Would you consider the successful show Balika Vadhu as a milestone in your career?
Well, it was not just the milestone but Balika Vadhu was the turning point in my career. Till then, television shows had music which sounded more like a bang and was rather noisy, but I brought in melody. I experimented with live instrumentation like the sitar, sarod, bansuri, sarangi to get the Rajasthani folk essence. Of course, the show’s success helped to build my credibility as a music director, it simply skyrocketed (smiles).
Q. Your forte remains Western Classical music. So how could you find the audiences pulse with Indian music especially folk music?
Western Classical is not only my forte but also my foundation. However, I soon realised that we are catering to Indians and folk music is its pulse. Also, if you notice, most of the popular songs are based on folk. Thankfully, after Balika Vadhus success, I got shows that had the essence of different folk genres. I was doing shows with Marathi music, South Indian, Gujrati, North East. Not only was it an enjoyable experience but a learning one too.
Q. Kindly elaborate on your musical journey with the shows that you have composed music for?
I have done almost 130 shows and about 23,000 episodes till now. My first show was Kagaar on Sahara in 2002 for which I won the best background score award and a host of other awards for song composition. I did about 500 episodes of Saath Phere on Zee TV, about 800 episodes of Laado, about 2200 episodes of Balika Vadhu and about 1500 episodes of Diya aur Baati. In short, I have an impressive repertoire of successful shows.
I also won around 200 International awards at various music festivals. I started a music video sector during Covid times where I got about 100 top composers to sing Vande Mataram in just 15 days for which I won about 70 International awards.
On Women’s Equality Day, I got about 150 prominent women artists together for a song titled Jaago Zara which won me over 100 awards in the International festival circuit. Right now, what is most exciting is my latest offering ‘Don’t play with Fire’ and ‘I see the light’ tracks.
Q. Is composing for Bollywood on the cards?
Somehow, Bollywood has a lot of clicks to contend with and I simply have no time for that. That said, I am open to scoring for movies if an interesting project comes by. I have scored background scores for Anubhav Sinha’s movie and a couple of others too. What is also interesting is composing for the OTT platform which is really big these days. Recently, I composed the title song of Baarish which is my personal favourite.
Q. Which music composers keep inspiring you?
John Williams and Hans Zimmer for sure. As far as Indian composers go, its A R Rahman and also Satyajit Ray.
Q. Which upcoming projects are you looking forward to?
I have Neerja on Colours, a show on Voot. Also I do shows on Tourism for the Indian Government and advertising projects for ICICI and other cos.
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