Dasara

Dasara is the soundtrack album composed by Santhosh Narayanan to the 2023 film of the same name written and directed by debutant Srikanth Odela, and stars Nani and Keerthy Suresh. The soundtrack to the film features 10 songs released under the Saregama record label. It was preceded by six tracks released as singles—"Dhoom Dhaam Dhostham", "Ori Vaari", "Chamkeela Angeelesi", "Oh Ammalaalo Ammalaalo", "Celebration of Vennela" and "Cricket Rap"—followed by the soundtrack released on 14 April 2023. The songs were written by Kasarla Shyam, Sri Mani, Rehman, Gaddam Suresh in Telugu, whereas Vivek, Muthamil, Santhosh Varma, Varadaraj Chikkaballapura, Kausar Munir, Raqueeb Alam, Vinay, Tarun Mathur were credited as the songwriters for the Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi versions. Development The film is scored by Santhosh Narayanan in his third Telugu venture after Billa Ranga (2013) and Guru (2017). Odela and the team wanted a composer giving time and freedom for expressing director's vision in the story, and also providing rooted musicians for the audience. After zeroing multiple musicians, he finalised on Narayanan. In an interview, Narayanan revealed that he heard over 90 scripts from Telugu, where he picked Dasara as he opined it as "one of the best scripts he heard in 10 years". According to Narayanan, the film offered him the space for research and experimentation that went on for more than a year, as being a rooted film with lot of rustic cultural elements, he added:"It wasn’t superficial research where I just call someone or spend time with them, I never do that. We worked really hard for this film [...] In that one year, I learned a lot about that culture. Since I did not know the language I was very careful not to misrepresent anything. In Tamil, we take care of sounds so well, and we ensure certain ethnic sounds are not drowned out by other elements. I wanted to do the same in Dasara, and I found people I could trust with for delivering such an output. It was an amazing experience and I am proud to be part of that film." Narayanan also praised Srikanth Odela's vision to bring the rustic tonality as "he is very rooted and had a vast knowledge of the region where he comes from" comparing that of Mari Selvaraj's vision towards nativity and rootedness in Pariyerum Perumal (2018).