Real People | Real Stories

Mangal Maharjan of EMW Records (left), with Siddhartha, Rashil and Gurun of Kutumba

Music is huge, right? I won’t wait for you to answer; it just is. Until now, in our little films we have relied mostly on some pretty good royalty free music we found on the internet. It works, but, it’s not quite all that.

Two days ago I had a nice sit-down with Raju, who runs our local snacks-and-beer emporium (as well as the laundry and phone office opposite and the music/DVD store next door. Industrious and very sweet fellow), to talk over music for our film.

Turns out most of what I ended up liking was produced by East Meets West Music Box, a little record store that became a locally important music label.

There was a number on some of the records, and I called it and was fortunate to arrange a meeting with Mangal, the owner. Quick like a bunny, I drafted a little two-page proposal explaining what we’re doing, what we’re looking for, and how we think it might be in his interest to help us out with some film rights to his label’s music. I took it with me to the shop.

At our appointed meeting time, Mangal was not there, and I left disappointed, expecting that was that. But 90 minutes later, I got a call–Mr. Maharjan, with apologies. He’d seen the proposal and liked it. And why don’t we meet?

Brilliant meeting. Nice guy. He’s the producer on a lot of his artists’ stuff–including Kutumba, a progressive folk ensemble that a couple of his sons are in. A couple of the musicans were there as well, and we all had a nice talk and a pleasant listen to records from the EMW catalog.

They understood what I was wanting, and if I read the situation right, they were as excited by the prospect of having their music in our modest little movie as I am. We liked each other. It felt good, and authentic, and on a very small scale, kind of high powered.

I was completely clear that our film is more likely to be seen by a relatively small audience than it is to, like, go big or anything. But that didn’t seem to matter to Mangal and the fellas. They love music, and they want it to do its job, which is to move people, tell stories, make connections.

That’s what we’re going to do with it. We’ve picked out eight CDs with a range of useful and accessible (not to mention quite beautiful) music on them. If all goes to plan, tomorrow we’ll have a signed agreement (in my hack legalese) giving us full rights to use them in our Nepal based films.

I do love it when things work!