As music composer for the Bollywood film “Lucknow Central” Arjunna Harjaie out did the brief given to him by director Ranjit Tiwari when he was asked to compose a tune for a particular jail sequence in the movie. Harjaie collaborated with famous percussionist Taufiq Qureshi who came up with various rhythms and sounds using his body for the song while his band Mumbai Stamp came up with grooves using trash cans, plates, bins, tin boxes, buckets and other objects that are found at a jail to create the rhythm for the song. 

Arjunna Harjaie is a Mumbai based composer, singer and musician working in Bollywood who has come a long way with a string of success on whatever he does. 

Born into a musical family, Harjaie had the best of both Punjabi and Bengali traditions of music besides which he also learnt Western classical and jazz music. With an early instinct and clarity to be a musician, Harjaie shifted to Mumbai and started training under Pt. Sri Suresh Wadekar at his gurukul; he is also a trained pianist and a top notch sound engineer.

From performance to an evolved interest in production and composition, Harjaie took to composition. From there began his illustrious career spanning for almost a decade during which he has composed the music for big brands like Dettol Dettol Ho, Jio Prime (Hoinga Hoinga), Amazon Prime, Maggie, Aquaguard, ISL Series, Make My Trip, Myntra, Flipkart, and many other big brands.

His career as an ad jingles composer has had many significant collaborations with leading lyricists and directors like Kumaar, Prasoon Joshi, Amit Sharma, Rajesh Saathi, Anupam Mishra, Manoj Pillai, Sainath, Hemant Bandari, Vasan Bala, and singers like Jonita Gandhi, Divya Kumar, Swaroop Khan, Jubin Nautiyal, Shilpa Rao. 

His association with director Nikhil Advani fetched him lot of critical appreciation and awards for projects like Guddu Engineer, P.O.W - Bandhi Yuddh Ke (Harjai composed the original score for 107 episodes and composed 6 songs, he also lent his voice for all the songs along with co singers Nandini Srikar, Shashaa Tirupati, Jonita Gandhi, and Surabhi Dashputra) for which Harjaie composed all songs and background score.

On his latest work, Arjunna has composed 3 songs for Advani's next directorial “Lucknow Central”, starring Farhan Akhtar. The dramatic narrative portrays how the leading character’s life progresses in jail and how music becomes an intricate part of not only his journey, but the rest of the band’s (jail inmates’) as well. Besides composing 3 songs, Harjaie has also done the background score and OST for promos and trailers of the film. 

Harjaie has won the Best Music Award at the 5th Mumbai Shorts International Film Festival for Nikhil Advani’s Guddu Engineer amongst a wide submission of 217 international films; He has also won the Abbey Gold and Bronze Award for Best Music Score and songs in 2017. 

He states, “The process of Teen Kabooter was hectic, I spent days inside my studio ideating the entire arrangement with various musicians, trying and experimenting with different sounds using unconventional instruments and methods. During the final process of recording, we collaborated with Taufiq Qureshi and his group Mumbai stamp to record sounds of Trash cans, Buckets, Foot Tapping, Mouth Percussions, Body Percussions, Whistles, and claps. This song has an ensemble cast in regards to singing as well, the superb lyrics by Kumaar sir are voiced by Mohit Chauhan, Divya Kumaar and me; the RAP is written and sung by Raftaar. I feel blessed and grateful to Nikkhil Advani sir and Ranjit Tiwari who inspired me to try a song like this with so many collaborations”.

Speaking on his recording sessions during the process of composing songs for Lucknow Central,  Harjaie  says, “Teen Kabooter song has many stories. It was conceived in my studio while Kumaar sir, Nikkhil Sir, Ranjit Tiwari and myself with my team of musicians were just chatting about how the song should be. While we were still talking we started jamming and in the next 15 mins, the song idea was cracked. But the bigger challenge was to execute such a song with precision eliminating most of the musical instruments that we used for our scratch.” 

He also adds, “I also met with Bharat the body percussionists to understand what type of training the actors were going through so I could do something on the same lines in the music as well to make it look and sound more realistic. Before I collaborated with Taufiq Sir, I met this interesting group Aflatunes, with them I experimented for three days in my studio and designed a good acapella sound space, then later Taufiq sir did his magic. I’m very particular about the sound i need, so there was this incidence while we were recording at Yashraj studios, we were doing thee body percussion section and I was not getting the desired sound, so I requested Taufiq sir if we can try the sound of bare upper body for a snappier sound, he was very professional and his entire group did this on my request. I’m extremely thankful to all those who helped me achieve this sound which I can proudly say defines my style.”