How OAFF and Savera Breathe Fresh Air Into Bollywood Soundtracks With ‘Gehraiyaan’

Producer-composer OAFF aka Kabeer Kathpalia (left) and singer-producer Savera Mehta. Photos: Ishaan Nair (OAFF), Courtesy of the artist (Savera)

If you needed any further proof of how far a good song can go, there’s Mumbai/Ahmedabad producer OAFF aka Kabeer Kathpalia’s 2018 song “Frontline” featuring singer-songwriter Lothika Jha. The intoxicating, vulnerable jam was adapted into India’s trending title track (29 million YouTube views) to the just-released film Gehraiyaan, directed by Shakun Batra.

It was preceded by “Doobey,” the alluring lush Hindi pop song released on January 24th via Sony Music that has currently racked up over 53 million YouTube streams. Although it accompanied visuals of a romance that brews between Deepika Padukone and Siddhant Chaturvedi’s characters, “Doobey” became the go-to bop on short video apps and creators and pretty much turned OAFF, Lothika and composer-producer Savera Mehta into stars. Kathpalia shares some of the oddest contexts in which he’s heard the songs off Gehraiyaan playing on social media. “I’ve seen videos of chicken lollipops, tandoori momos, a tutorial on waxing,” he says with a laugh.

Kathpalia is still learning to deal with it. “I’ve never had my Instagram blow up like this. I don’t even know what to respond to! I’ve been getting calls from people I haven’t heard from in years – even my teachers and stuff,” he says. How does the heat of the limelight feel? “It’s amazing, I’m super grateful that it’s all happening for our music. I’m learning to recalibrate myself so that I can enjoy it more,” the producer adds.

OAFF has enjoyed hundreds of thousands of streams for an independent artist since 2018, when he released songs like “Frontline” and “For A While.” As it turns out, Gehraiyaan director Shakun Batra had heard OAFF’s 2020 trippy synth instrumental “Perpetuate” and called on Kathpalia – as well as his regular creative collaborator Savera – to craft the background score for the movie. “He put that song [“Perpetuate”] in the film and felt the vibes were matching.” The film soundtrack is completed by the synth-pop track “Beqaboo” featuring singer-songwriter Shalmali, a reprise of the title track helmed poignantly by Mohit Chauhan plus banger remixes of “Doobey” and “Gehraiyaan” by bass music frontrunner Sickflip and Goa-based producer Skeletron aka Allan D’Souza, respectively.

The music of Gehraiyaan has arguably succeeded because OAFF and Savera delivered a different, sometimes understated kind of pop that the artists feel is fully representative of who they are. Kathpalia points to the openness of Batra in this regard, “He’s super open and experimental. He liked what we were doing as opposed to being guns for hire.”

In the course of pitching their music to be considered for Gehraiyaan and being given the green light by Batra, most of their conversations with the director were “non-musical” according to Kathpalia. “It was about what is this piece of music doing here and what should the music be here. That was a really fun challenge,” the producer says.

A familiar face who entered the scene to bridge the gap was singer-songwriter and music supervisor Ankur Tewari. Along with ace lyricist Kausar Munir, the indie favorite also wrote the lyrics for the title track. Kathpalia mentions that he’d never met Tewari prior to working on this project but had heard his music. The producer was even more surprised that Tewari had heard OAFF too. “Ankur was there to guide the whole process of how a big production like this might work… protect us from things what we didn’t need to get involved in so that we focused on the music,” Kathpalia says.

OAFF and Savera – who have previously worked on the music for sports-drama series Inside Edge – say aimed for a “cohesive, immersive” sonic experience. Overall, the soundtrack project was a “super easy” experience minus any pressures, being allowed to experiment. “Everybody needs to look at things without biases, as individual projects instead of having blanket things,” he adds. Given the success of Gehraiyaan and its music, Kathpalia hopes all the other film soundtrack projects coming up are also fun.

While Kathpalia is fielding the bulk of the interviews, Savera is cloistered away in Goa with family. “He’s surfing there. The first thing I’m gonna do is go and join him and learn surfing after all this is done. After that, we’ll huddle and decide what we’d like to explore next. There’s some indie music I’m working on that I haven’t had a chance to release and a couple of other film projects,” he says.