SIGNATURE TUNE
MAR 20, 2004 – “I CREATE AN environment conducive to work. I know lots of people in town. I know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. I find people. I play. I’m a rock ‘n’ roll drummer. I take care of technical stuff. I handle scheduling problems. I make decisions on who’d write music, based on time and money considerations. I can exist in many worlds – technically, creatively. I’m a scoring wrangler. I’m a facilitator. I’m a muse. I snowboard. I cook. I make good coffee…”
As Michael Mason answers – rather, refuses to stop answering – my question about what he does, I’m beginning to realise it’d have been easier to ask him what he does not do. The reply to the latter question would have simply been, “I don’t write music.”
That’s the only thing he doesn’t do, this self-confessed Jack-of-all-trades, whose contributions to films such as Amistad, The Princess Diaries, Waterworld, Grand Canyon, Pretty Woman and French Kiss have resulted in his being credited with titles like Additional Scoring Engineer, Scoring Coordinator, Score Co-producer, Music Recording Engineer, Music Editor and Assistant Sound Engineer.
Mason tells me, “When I first started doing this” – that is, all the things in the first paragraph except snowboarding, cooking and good-coffee making – “I was with [M Night Shyamalan’s preferred composer and creator of the world-famous signature tune of TV’s ER] James Newton Howard. He was writing music, and I learnt to do the other things because he just wanted to do the writing and be kept away from everything else.”
Mason has been keeping composers away from everything else for over 100 movies now, and he’s in Chennai to score what he calls – with helpful air quotes – an ‘art film.’ This qualification, though informative, isn’t really necessary – dealing as it does with the travails of widows in Brindavan, there’s no danger of mistaking the project for a potential blockbuster, unless, of course, Hema Malini is cast as one of the widows, with Amitabh Bachchan as her husband in flashbacks filled with Holi celebrations and Valentine’s Day numbers.
The story behind how Mason found his way into this film could easily find its way into a tale of long-lost friends titled Nanbargal. Twenty years ago, he used to play tennis regularly with neighbour Dharan Mandrayar. They lost touch with each other when Mason moved and became extremely busy with the things detailed in the first paragraph. (No more references to that, I promise.) Then Mason got in touch again, discovered that Dharan was working on this script, and the former tennis buddies decided to partner up again.
This isn’t Mason’s first visit to India. He came over earlier for a yatra – covering Amritsar, Delhi and Rishikesh – as he’s into kundalini yoga. (A rudraksha bead is strung around his neck, a kada adorns his right forearm, and he says, “I’m part of the American yoga movement. It’s been very beneficial to my life, physically and mentally.”) That was also the time he went to record stores and picked up some Indian pop (“Don’t ask me what it was.”), classical music and “some DJ Bhangra stuff.” All these influences will likely inspire his current effort, as will mantra music. I tell him this is the first time I’ve heard of this term, and he switches on a clipping that goes, “Jai Jai Maa, Durga…” Oh, that mantra music! He says it will play over the film’s end credits, signalling, perhaps, that it’s ‘The End’ for this interview as well.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Posted on March 20, 2004
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