A Blend of the World's Best: Jongnic Bontemps and Raashi Kulkarni
CineConcerts met with composer Jongnic Bontemps and Raashi Kulkarni to discuss their score to the new Disney original movie World’s Best!
Composers Jongnic Bontemps and Raashi Kulkarni
CineConcerts (CC): Raashi this is the first time we’ve spoken, would you tell me a little bit about your background and how you go into music?
CineConcerts recently interviewed Jongnic Bontemps regarding his score for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts! Read it here.
Raashi Kulkarni (RK): I grew up in an Indian-American household in western Maryland listening to, Indian classical music, jazz, classical music, Bollywood, hip hop, R&B and more. I started taking classical piano lessons at seven and flute lessons at nine, and grew up immersed in different genres of music.
I always had an affinity for storytelling. My piano teacher instilled the importance of storytelling in me at an early age. I garnered a love of marrying music to visuals during those lessons, whether it was through a piece by Chopin, Bach or Debussy. My piano teacher inspired me to think of a visual story while performing these pieces. I studied economics and music at The George Washington University with a piano scholarship. After working in the corporate sector for a few years, I applied to University of Southern California’s film scoring program. After that, I trained under Blake Neely for about five years and went freelance about a year and a half ago.
CC: So how did you guys meet initially and how did that lead to you two collaborating on this project?
Jongnic Bontemps (JB): So, we met back, I think it was 2015 when Raashi was a student at the USC scoring program where I was a teacher. I graduated in 2011-2012. They hired me to be the tech teacher and Raashi was one of my students and she was actually my best student.
And I was like, I need to keep an eye on this one over there. So, when I had an opportunity to ask for some help on a few projects, Raashi was the first person I asked and we were able to work on a couple of small films together. And then she went off to work for Blake Neely. In 2021, we pitched together for the Netflix romantic comedy, Wedding Season, because it was a combination of contemporary music with a South Asian flair. Because the lead characters were all South Asian, our two sensibilities aligned very nicely for that film.
When Raashi was hired to score World's Best, there was a hip hop component to it. She knew my background and that I was an avid listener and fan of 90’s New York hip hop. She invited me to come on board and score the film with her because one of the things that both she and I focus on is being as authentic as possible with our music and making sure that the music feels like the characters and the stories that we see on screen. This being a hip hop musical, the score had to have a hip hop element to it, but with the folks on screen, it’s a South Asian family. We wanted to make sure that we brought that South Asian, let’s say, seasoning, that flavor, to the score as well. We were able to combine both of our backgrounds, both of our expertise in these forms, and combine them to make something that we think is interesting and pays homage to the hip hop, but also feels like the characters on screen.
CC: How did you approach this project? Two creative minds coming together to write a singular piece, I feel like it’s very difficult, so how does that work? Do you start on your own and then come together to work on it?
RK: [00:06:05] As film composers, we have to become chameleons, right? We all have to be able to write in many different styles and genres. So, as far as collaborating, we just had a jam session. After reading the script, we had an idea of what we wanted to bring to the score. As JB mentioned, these characters happen to be Indian-American, but they have this love and connection to hip hop music. Our producer, Utkarsh wanted us to pay subtle homage to their Indian roots while respecting the authenticity of hip hop during the 90’s and early 2000s. And since this is a Disney film, we wanted to maintain the magic of the storyline with a hybrid orchestral score, and were able to fuse comparable elements of Indian music with hip hop plus orchestra to create something fresh and unique. I think our collaboration in particular works because JB is like my brother. We were friends first, and leave our egos at the door and have fun with it. I think that's what makes the whole process enjoyable. After we came up with some themes for the characters, we went back to our studios and wrote suites of music away from picture, sent them to each other, sent them to our director and luckily a lot of that music stuck.
CC: So, you approach composing together as an element of joy and fun versus the technical aspects of what the music is supposed to do?
JB: What’s unique about our relationship is that we allow ourselves to be inspired by each other. Raashi will, let's say, take a first pass at a cue and then send it to me. (We worked out the technical kinks so we could actually send these sequences back and forth.) I’d load up that sequence that she worked on in my system, which would inspire me to make a modification, send it back to her and say, “What do you think about this?”
What I’m most proud about is that almost every single cue has a little bit of both of us in it. I would say actually every cue has a little balance because we created these themes together. We brought our influences or past knowledge of, again, these genres together. And then on top of that, we wrote on each other's cues back and forth.
Sometimes we didn't bat a thousand. It's not like every single cue we sent in was approved from the beginning. Sometimes I would say, let me take a pass at it or Raashi would say, I have an idea. We would then modify things based on that feedback as well. Having that fluidity of being able to pass music back and forth between our systems and our influences really led to a very unique score.
CC: Did it help, being a student, knowing the musical language too, being able to understand where he was coming from musically?
RK: Since we've collaborated together over the last eight years and had co-scored another feature two years ago, we were able to dive in. We know each other's workflow. We had matching templates. All of that is helpful.
CC: So, when you listen to the music now can you tell who wrote what part? Or is it really just too blended together from going back and forth in the process?
RK: It's a really good question. I mean, if you really went into the nitty gritty we could probably figure it out.
JB: Well, the good news is that the directors and the editors and all folks, they couldn't tell.
RK: Exactly.
JB: Everything that we sent is from us. And they really couldn't tell any difference as far as who wrote what. And that's exactly by design. And I mean, yeah, we could tell you like maybe she took 90% of this cue and I did 90% of that cue, but that doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, it all came from that same nucleus of that jam session, which was 100% of both of us.
Film Still from World’s Best
CC: So, talk a little bit about the combination of cultures here. How exactly do you blend hip hop and Indian culture, and this boy’s journey with losing his father, how do you blend those things together in a way that makes sense musically? It sounds overwhelming.
RK: So, I'll give you an example of where some of the inspiration came from. In the film, we see characters beatboxing, which inspired us to add tabla bols into the score. A tabla bol is the spoken syllable or musical phrase from the corresponding stroke of the instrument. It enhanced our storytelling narrative to have Utkarsh’s vocals featured in those score moments between father and son, especially because they duet together in the songs.
We also brought in TikTok superstars Kiran and Nivi to come in and sing on the score. They provided a colorful texture with their vocals, and it paid homage to our characters’ heritage. They were highlighted in cues that featured Prem’s Mom Priya, played by Punam Patel, and also recorded vocals on one of the songs in the film, which provided cohesion between the songs and score.
In terms of South Asian culture, we were able to find comparable elements of Indian music to hip hop music, whether it was in the tabla bols, which is comparable to beatboxing or using swarams over musical motifs. That's just an example of how we were able to fuse hip hop and South Asian culture and be authentic about it.
CC: And that must be so fun to just be able to fuse all of these cultures.
JB: It was. Since we were hired early in the process, we were able to create a new musical foundation before a musical direction was set with a temp score or anything like that. We got in so early that they were still shooting. There was no temp score.
By the time we had our jam session and we created our suites, we had this concept of what we wanted the score to sound like. Another element was the math, like you've mentioned before, which I'll come back to. We were able to turn that over before there were any preconceived notions as to what the score should be. Our director, the producers, and the editors were very open. When they started putting the music to the picture, it instantly started getting married to it. We were fortunate that this set the foundation for the score, as opposed to chasing temp or leaning on something preexisting.
We were really excited to have that clean slate to create, because sometimes when there is already a set direction, there can be resistance to something new.
The other thing that we did, going back to the math stuff, was to integrate Prem’s character as a mathlete. We brought in some sounds of pencils and calculators, as some of the percussive elements of the hip hop score. So instead of having high hats, for example, we used a pencil tapping or a rhythmic calculator button.
RK: I grew up on Disney movies and love these magical storylines. So that was also fun to incorporate: this magical element on top of the hip hop, the South Asian culture, the math.
CC: What about the choreography of it? I assume they're doing it to the music that you wrote?
JB: No. So, remember, this is a hip hop musical. By the time we were hired, they already had all the songs written. We were able to listen to the songs and get a sense of their musical texture.
Film Still from World’s Best
CC: And that helped you inform stylistically how to blend certain elements together?
JB: Well, I will say there was no South Asian element in the songs. That was something that we wanted to bring in with the guidance from our director.
RK: Our director and our producer wanted to pay subtle homage to the fact that these characters are South Asian. They just happen to be Indian-American. It was intentional to add the tabla bols and Kiran and Nivi’s vocals on the score. Having them on a song gave everything an overarching cohesion.
CC: Both of you mentioned something about using pencils and calculators and these organic elements of sound in the score. And I feel like that's really interesting because it gives it this subtle texture that, as a watcher, I may not realize, but subconsciously might make me feel a certain way. Is that something that you sprinkled throughout the entire score, not just with that character, but with multiple other instances?
JB: The two instances that we did that was, again, the rhythmic elements with the math sounds. As Raashi mentioned, we found South Asian equivalents for more traditional hip hop sounds. Using the tabla bols instead of beatboxing. Using the swarams instead of vocal runs or vocal riffs, you know, that you might hear in a hip hop song. So, it was really about trying to find interesting substitutes for things that supported the characters and the storyline.
RK: Since I grew up learning all these different genres of music, I was able to find those similarities between the hip hop and Indian classical music. It can be complex. For our purposes, we were able to choose which elements would apply to the film. What is going to serve our story? What is going to serve the picture? How will we be authentic while we do all of this?
So that's kind of how we focused on that. For the other acoustic elements, JB and I were very intentional about every cue in the film where we did want to incorporate those math sounds. It was primarily used for Prem’s character while at school. I also played flute on the score, so that was kind of the through line. It became Prem’s instrument, if you will. And then Kiran and Nivi's vocals were used primarily on the mother's storyline. The tabla bols were primarily used between father and son. So, every character relationship had a musical support.
CC: This is a Disney project and you had mentioned that there's a magical element to that, right? There's always this imagination element to all of the stuff that they do. Did you have to think about what magic means musically and how you're going to put that into the mix of these genres together? How did you approach that idea of magic?
RK: Growing up watching Disney movies informed my perception of “magical.” However, our director didn't necessarily want us to write a typical Disney-style score. He wanted us to compose a score that would help tell our story and serve the picture. Personally, I tapped into the innocence of childhood, reminiscing about my time on the math team when I, too, was 12.
JB: We would get the note sometimes, “that's too Disney. It’s too much, let’s bring it back.” There is a grounding reality in this film that the director wanted to make sure came across. At the end of the day, this is a movie about the loss of a parent and the hole that it leaves; what families do to grieve or in this case potentially not to grieve. So, he never wanted that to be lost with the magic that is in the film. He wanted the music to always be grounding us into the reality and let the magic speak for itself.
RK: To add on that, Roshan Sethi, our director, was so clear in his notes to us, telling us that he wanted to make a film that is also for adults. Yes, it's a kids’ movie, but I really do think that our mission was accomplished in creating a film that adults will also enjoy and relate to.
CC: Are there any specific moments that you’d like audiences to keep an ear out for when listening to the score?
RK: I think it's very exciting that we were able to fuse these South Asian elements into the score. It's done very subtly. It's not on every cue. But to have a South Asian family at the core of a Disney film, this is the first time I'm really I'm seeing that. I hope it's something that audiences hear.
JB: And before I answer and add to that question, I also want to make sure that we appreciate the fact that, I believe, Raashi is the first South Asian female composer to score a Disney film.
CC: That's awesome. That must be kind of surreal, right?
RK: It’s wild. But again, I'd be remiss not to mention the many women and people of diverse backgrounds who have come before me paving the way. I hope that this is just another opportunity for people to see composers that look like them doing studio work.
JB: There is an intentional relationship between the songs and the score. The songs were done first. One of the things that's different about this movie is that we don't start the movie with a big musical number. The first musical number, comes in probably near the end of the first act. So, we have the first act without any sort of big musical number.
It was important to us that we prepare the way for the songs. You’ll notice that the score subtly quotes motifs or melodies or maybe the instrumentation of the song. And I think every song is actually prepared for by a score cue that precedes it. There's a very interesting leading of the listener through the musical journey that's really a relationship between score and songs. And remember, the songs were done way before we were hired. It was very intentional to make sure that it all sounds extremely cohesive and like one body of work.
RK: Correct. Just to add on to what JB said, all of this was made possible because we were hired so early. We were very calculated about these moments where we wanted to highlight an upcoming song with a subtle score nod.
CC: Do you two have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?
JB: Well, right now it's independent projects moving forward. But we always keep the door open for future collaborations and jam sessions.