When Devanshu Singh was approached for Khalbali Records, the filmmaker saw in it an opportunity to not only explore profound questions around art and artistes, but also entertain one of his favourite passions—music. The JioCinema series that revolves around the politics of the music industry has an original soundtrack comprising 22 songs. “In my head, I visualised 40 songs in the first season. But, among other reasons, there were budget constraints. So, we stopped at 22. I am a huge music buff, and got the chance to make a show around it. I didn’t want to shy away from creating music. Growing up, I learned music first and filmmaking later. Music is the purest art form. All art forms aspire to become music,” he poetically shares of the Ram Kapoor-starrer.

While Singh initially wanted Amit Trivedi to create the entire album, he was unable to provide the ace composer the stipulated time he required to fulfil the task. Trivedi, says Singh, required two-and-a-half years to do the job. “It was a fair ask, but I had only eight months. So, I told him, why don’t you become the voice of [the character], Mauj? Mauj is the artiste who wants to create an independent label and help other artistes. He is the inspiration behind the show. So, then he created six songs in the Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri and English languages,” shares the director, who then got various independent artistes to work on the rest of the album.