Viju Shah

Some Lesser Known Facts About Viju Shah

• Viju Shah is an Indian music composer and music director. He is the son of the veteran music director Kalyanji Virji Shah of the composer duo Kalyanji Anandji. Due to his exceptional skills in composing instrumental electronic soundtracks and background music, he is often known as the Hans Zimmer of Bollywood.

• At the age of four or five, Viju Shah began attending music classes and practising the harmonium.

• Before he became a composer, Viju Shah worked as an arranger for his father and uncle Kalyanji-Anandji. During that time, he met Bollywood director Rajiv Rai. Producer Gulshan Rai, the father of Rajiv Rai, approached Kalyanji-Anandji to write the soundtrack for Tridev. However, Viju Shah and Rajiv Rai composed the songs that ultimately became hits, like Tirchi Topiwale, and they were accepted. Both the movie and the album were enormous hits. According to a legal arrangement, Viju Shah was identified as the conductor and Kalyanji and Anandji as the songwriters. ^[3]Scroll.in

• In 1992, he made his debut as an Indian film composer with the release of the song “Saat Samundar Paar,” which went on to become a hit song in Bollywood and continues to be regarded as a popular song by many.

• When Shah first gained recognition as a composer, electronic music had started replacing traditional orchestral arrangements. He witnessed the gradual and noticeable transition of Hindi film music from acoustics to electronics. In an interview, talking about his transition from harmonium to synthesizers, he said,
  

  I started learning music on the harmonium, but when the first synthesiser arrived, I looked at the freedom it gave me and realised that I could go a long way with this, I wanted to do with electronics what Laxmikant-Pyarelal did with acoustics – make the sound feel so big and dynamic.”

• His first big break came with the blockbuster film Mohra in 1994. With hits like “Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast” and “Tip Tip Barsa Pani,” the soundtrack to the film’s soundtracks went on to become the second best-selling record of the year.

  

• In 2018, Tanishk Bagchi‘s rendition of Shah’s 1996 hit song Aankh Marey from the Bollywood film Tere Mere Sapne (1996) became a chart-topper again.

• In 2020, Viju Shah made his debut on the OTT platforms when he composed the music for the Netflix cop film Class of ’83.