From Mychael Danna’s website:
Mychael Danna is an Academy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. His works include the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, following his collaborations with Lee on The Ice Storm (1997) and Ride with the Devil (1999). Among his other awards are the Emmy for Outstanding Composition for the mini-series World Without End (2013), the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing (2013), the World Soundtrack Awards for Film Composer of the Year, and Best Score of the Year (both 2013), and the Hollywood Film Award for Composer of the Year (2016).
The composer has this to say of his music from Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding:
Baraat is the Hindi word for the wedding procession of the bridegroom to the bride’s village, with the groom on horseback, surrounded by his family and friends and musicians, singing and dancing with the joy of the occasion. Traditionally, the music that would accompany this noisy journey would be the exciting rhythm of the dhol drums. But since the time of the British military brass bands, the more affluent weddings use this strange yet typically Indian absorption of marching band instruments into Indian popular songs… musical proof that outside influences will come and go, but there will always be an India. This piece was written by me in that style for Mira Nair’s film Monsoon Wedding.
I arranged this piece for band with the composer’s blessing for a 2005 Columbia Wind Ensemble concert.
Mychael Danna on Wikipedia, IMDB, and Amazon.
Monsoon Wedding on IMDB, Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, and its own official site (which is a bit of a relic).
Here is the original:
And here is my band arrangement of it, performed by Columbia Summer Winds in 2011 at Bryant Park, NYC, with me conducting. That white noise in the beginning is the fountain right behind us.
And here’s a preview for the actual film: