MUMBAI: Imtiaz Ali is one of the most popular and celebrated Indian filmmakers today, with movies like ‘Rockstar’, ‘Jab We Met’, ‘Love Aaj Kal’, ‘Highway’ and others. MixRadio IMENA Director Entertainment Karan Grover interviewed the director, who is known for investing as much energy in the music of his films as he does in the story and concept.

Most of his movies have catered to youth as target audience, and it seems that the young crowd can easily connect with what Ali has to say. Focusing on that point, Ali said, “Young people do not want to be spoon-fed and if you have a story to tell, they will listen.”

Deemed as a musical filmmaker, Ali believes that music is intrinsically so powerful that sometimes it can destroy the story as well. He has worked with musicians like AR Rahman, Pritam, Salim Sulaiman and many more.

Denying that Bollywood movies are forcefully adding songs to their movies for the purpose of sales, Ali commented, “Music need not be there unless there is a purpose, unless it adds more to the plot. Nowadays, we first compose music and then add lyrics; that was not the case decades ago.”

Ali also supported Bollywood songs by saying, “People remember songs; they may not remember the movie or what the movie was about, but they remember songs that are really old. These songs keep playing on the radio, and the life of songs is much longer than the movies.”

He stated that he has the highest regard for composers, including live musicians. He said, “I am impressed by how things are going and I think that these independent musicians need to strike more and more. When we are recording the music for a film in the studio, it is like we are a band and the entire process of composing music and supervising it is highly enjoyable.”

Ali concluded by saying that people and their stories inspire him for the kind of music he composes for his films. He is currently working on his upcoming movie ‘Tamasha’, which has eight songs in its script.